TODAY'S SUPREME CHALLENGE || 


TO AMERICA 


JAMES FRANKLIN LOVE 








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TO-DAY’S SUPREME CHALLENGE 
TO AMERICA 


Rev. JAMES FRANKLIN LOVE, p.p. 





TO-DAY’S SUPREME 
CHALLENGE TO Al 








BY 


GICAL Stel 
Rev. JAMES FRANKLIN LOVE, pv. _ 


Author of “Missionary Messages,’ “The Unique Message 
and Universal Mission of Christianity,’ “The 
Mission of Our Nation,” etc. 


NEW ~ YORK 


GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT, 1925, 
BY SUNDAY SCHOOL BOARD 
OF THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION 


TO-DAY’S SUPREME CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 
Bee pie 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


CHAPTER 


I 


II 
III 
IV 


V 


VI 
VII 
VIII 


IX 


CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTORY: THE TIMES IN WuIcH WE 
LIVE : ; 


Sicn ONE: THE HistortcAL BACKGROUND 
S1cN Two: THE DISTRESS OF THE WoRLD 


S1cN THREE: THE DISILLUSIONMENTS OF THE 
WorLpD 


SicnN Four: THE UNIVERSAL OUTBREAK OF 
DEPRAVITY 


S1Gn Five: Direct WorkK OF THE Hoty SPIRIT 
Sicn Six: THE NEw OpportunNITY IN EUROPE 


SicN SEVEN: THE SUDDEN RISE AND Popu- 
LARITY OF DEMOCRACY . 


Wuat THEN? ; 2 f . 2 “ 





TO-DAY’S SUPREME CHALLENGE 
TO AMERICA 





TO-DAY’S SUPREME CHALLENGE 
TO AMERICA 


CHAPTER uf 
INTRODUCTORY: THE TIMES IN WHICH WE LIVE 


The man who takes sober invoice of the times in which 
he lives is an exceptional individual. Few men wisely and 
faithfully appraise their own generation and circumstance. 
Memorials of the past and signs and prophecies of the fu- 
ture are the favorite symbols of many. The doctrines, 
promises and prophecies of the Scripture are often more 
esteemed than their commands. Things to come have a 
greater fascination than things to be done. The Scrip- 
tures, it is true, tell us where we came from and where 
we are going to, and the latter ravishes the soul of the 
righteous; but the Scriptures are the pragmatic religious 
literature of the world. For each in his day and genera- 
tion they prescribe plain duties to be performed as well as 
plain truths to be believed and glorious dreams to be 
cherished. The Scriptures condemn those who disobey 
them and quite as severely reproach those who do not dis- 
cern the signs of their times. The man who serves his 
own generation does it by the will of God. 

We do well, therefore, to heed .both what God says in 
his Book and what he signifies in the times in which we 
live. If we wish to go with Christ through these marvel- 
ous years, and wish at last to go to him flushed with the 
joy of a large achievement which shall enrich eternity for 
us, we must see what he is aiming at in our day. 
Through all history he is working in harmony with his 

9 


10 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


eternal purpose and program. He is always going the 
same way. The moral order of the world has its climaxes 
of opportunity and privilege for men and nations, but in 
it God is always aiming at the same ends. That he is at 
this time much concerned that American Christians shall 
discern the signs which indicate the way he is going and 
join him in a supreme service for this generation no one 
can doubt who reflects upon certain great, obtruding facts 
in current history. 

There is a luminous wake in the path of the Son of 
Man as he passes through this generation. His going is 
attended by a flare of circumstances which make his course 
unmistakable. He would lure us to follow him. A grati- 
fying reflection upon the circumstances of the hour is that 
they make it possible for us to go with him. He is not 
seen ascending heights which we have no means to ascend. 
He is going forth along the highways of service for which 
facilities have been provided us. It is indeed a service for 
which we have been both prepared and equipped. He is 
coaxing us to give to the world that which he has first 
given us; and in his advance-going among the nations 
he has prepared them to receive what we have to give as 
they were never prepared before. 

Never was there a time when we could by the full dis- 
charge of our duty confer such blessing on the world and 
so distinctly set forward the cause of Christ in the world 
as now. This is the climax of three centuries of provi- 
dential history for American Christianity and brings the 
American Christian public face to face with a mission to 
the world for which God has been nurturing it through 
these centuries. The way which we take at this time and 
the zeal with which we carry forward our Christian inter- 
national service will declare our worthiness or unworthi- 
ness of the favors of God marvelously bestowed upon us 
in the years which are gone. God by many providences, 
and now by the most lavish outpouring of temporal bless- 
ings ever bestowed upon a nation, has been creating here 
a Christianity and establishing and equipping here Chris- 


INTRODUCTORY 11 


tian churches for the transport of Christianity to all lands. 
It is this mission of American Christianity to which the 
signs of the times point and to the fulfillment of which 
they would call us at this hour. 

Nothing that confronts or affects the churches of 
America at this time has more significance than this fact. 
The signs which unmistakably indicate this fact are 
numerous and exceedingly impressive. Never in the his- 
tory of Christianity were exhibited so many signals of the 
divine summons to foreign mission service peculiarly. 
Never before has Foreign Missions been made so specifi- 
cally an American duty as it is to-day. Universal circum- 
stance has lifted Foreign Missions to a new place of im- 
portance, vested it with supreme urgency, newly positioned 
America among the nations and conditioned it to meet 
the new necessity. Upon America, the only land where 
evangelical Christianity is held in full freedom and where 
in numbers and resources it is fully matched against its 
odds, is laid a weight of responsibility which no other na- 
tion has ever carried. 

For the churches of Christ in the United States the 
war ended an era; the armistice marked the beginning of 
an epoch. Up to the war God had helped these churches 
to build a home base; since the armistice he has been call- 
ing them to back a world missionary program. For Eu- 
rope the war marked the convulsive death of an era in 
which autocracy in state and church had frowned haught- 
ily upon evangelical Christianity; with the armistice and 
the decisions of Versailles there was born a new epoch 
of opportunity for real Christianity and for the American 
churches to make sacred alliance with and pledge help to 
those of “like precious faith’? who had come out of the 
great conflict with multiplied need and with intensified 
longing for Christ and brotherly sympathy and fellow- 
ship. By such tremendous facts affecting both America 
and Europe, and in no small measure the whole world, 
Foreign Missions has been thrown into a new category of 
duty for the American churches. It has been lifted above 


12 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


all former comparisons with the home tasks. All old pari- 
ties between Foreign Missions and one of the many 
phases of the home work of Christianity have passed and 
doubtless passed forever. Providence and circumstance 
have now for more than six years held Foreign Missions 
with its new claims before the churches of North America. 
Since Armistice Day, 1918, Providence has raised many 
signals for the summons of the churches quickly and 
strongly to Christ’s leadership “into all the world.” The | 
world’s need of Christ is desperate and God’s call is ex- 
traordinary and imperious. 

For a Christian to miss the new meaning of Foreign 
Missions in the signs of his times means that he fails to 
understand the new epoch which was born in 1918, and to 
adjust his life to its new duties. He loses step with Christ 
in his march through the years and is certain to fall short 
in service to his own generation. For the North Ameri- 
can churches to miss this is to cheat Christ and them- 
selves out of victories and triumphs for the gospel which 
are now possible for the first time in the history of the 
world and obtainable by American churches for the first 
time in the history of American Christianity. Moreover, 
these victories now possible to the American churches are 
possible to them only. This lays a responsibility upon 
them which they have never carried before. To give our- 
selves at this time to other things and neglect Foreign 
Missions means to mistake secondary for primary duties, 
and doing so, to doom ourselves to walk bypaths alone 
instead of the highway of service and achievement with 
Christ. 

Have the leaders of God’s people in America the vision 
to discern the signs of the times and to point them out to 
the churches? To suffer the churches at this time of 
world distress, and in the face of the ringing calls of 
Providence, to substitute small tasks for great, secondary 
matters for primary duties, to remain at old posts when 
Christ leads a new charge, is, of all times, a tragedy. 
The fact which to-day should grip the conscience of every 


INTRODUCTORY 13 


American Christian is, that God is making an extraordi- 
nary call to foreign mission service, and that we may by 
heeding his call break all foreign mission records of 
achievement. There is no precedent to present circum- 
stance in all the history of Christianity. 

There is for serious and unbiased men no mistaking 
that Foreign Missions has been made the big business and 
that God is by many voices which have no other meaning 
calling us to it. Foreign Missions is not a thing which 
can at this hour be given a second place. There are an 
urgency and an emergency in Foreign Missions at this 
time which do not pertain to anything to which Ameri- 
can Christians are called. In the past, and for a good 
long time, God seems to have been patient while Foreign 
Missions waited on other things. Perhaps he withheld 
his imperative call until this hour, and even while millions 
died without the gospel, in order that we might get ready 
and, at the strategic moment in the world’s history, be able 
to meet its crisis and accomplish his purpose in the rescue 
of the nations. The clock of time has now struck the 
supreme hour. Delay is no longer tolerable. God is now 
sounding forth his trumpet. Disobedience and hesitation 
now declare our disloyalty. 

Before this discussion proceeds further, let us say with 
as much emphasis as we can, that there is no denial or 
disparagement of other duties. Attention should be given 
to every department of our home work. We think of 
no single department of the many into which we have 
divided our Christian task at home that is unimportant, 
or which should be slighted. We are saying only that 
Foreign Missions, and not one nor all of these home de- 
partments, has by the exigencies of the past six years been 
lifted to a distinctly new, more significant and command- 
ing place than it has held heretofore; and that no one 
department of the home task must, in view of this tre- 
mendous fact, for a moment be compared in urgency or 
claim with the all-comprehending and extraordinary duty 
of Foreign Missions at this hour. 


14 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


Moreover, so far as America is still unchristian, the 
conversion of the ungodly here must be the chief concern 
of our home work. If anything must stand in the way of 
giving every man abroad a chance to be saved, nothing 
but the evangelization of the unsaved at home should be 
allowed to do so. Salvation and the offer of salvation is 
plainly the primary, the incomparably chief thing as place 
and duty are fixed for Christian men by the New Testa- 
ment. Other things are important in their place, but their 
place is secondary, and always secondary to the supreme 
thing for which Christ died, and for which his churches 
exist,—the calling of sinners to repentance and the offer 
of salvation through the atoning cross of Christ. Other 
and secondary things will find their places, and will be 
cared for in due proportion when this task is made su- 
preme. But to curtail the work of evangelization at home 
and abroad in order to make sumptuous provision for sec- 
ondary things is to invite moral decay at home and mock 
at the predicament of a lost world. Dr. W. D. Nowlin 
brought forth tremendous applause from thousands of 
members of the Southern Baptist Convention at Atlanta, 
Georgia, in 1924, with these words: 


“The first and greatest mission of a New Testament 
church is the evangelization of the nations. The primacy of 
missions in our Lord’s plan is evident, and things of prime 
importance should be given first’ place. There are other 
tasks that are important, but their value consists in the fact 
that they are aids to our prime mission—evangelism. Edu- 
cation is important, but whenever a denomination begins to 
major on education and minor on missions, right then it 
begins to die.” 


There are duties at our doors. The home base is a 
tremendous factor in the warfare of faith and the con- 
version of the world. Indeed, God has by his past provi- 
dences quite as strongly emphasized the importance of the 
home base as by his present providences he now empha- 
sizes the supremacy of international Christian service. He 


INTRODUCTORY 15 


has done this by giving American Christianity three hun- 
dred providential years for the building of the home base 
before he set Foreign Missions to the front as the para- 
mount duty. God has given the American churches time 
to get ready for this tremendous hour. 


CHAPTER II 
SIGN ONE: THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 


There have appeared marvelous providences in the 
course of American history. If we would discern the signs 
of the times clearly and know their deep significance, we 
must view them against the background of this history 
and the marvels of God’s attending care of evangelical 
Christianity in America up to the present hour and cir- 
cumstance, 

Why was the discovery of America by civilized nations 
delayed from the beginning of time until 1492? China 
had invented the mariner’s compass and was using it; and 
China was an old civilization with a crowded population 
long before the days of Columbus. Why did not Provi- 
dence open the doors of this continent to China? Had he 
done so this would now be a heathen land, and Providence 
would not lead a heathen people to North America which 
he had preserved from creation as a site for an experi- 
ment in democracy and evangelical Christianity. 

Why was Columbus prevented by remarkable incident 
from landing on the coast of North Carolina, or Virginia, 
when to all human probability he would do so? To have 
landed on our Atlantic coast would have doomed North 
America to be a Roman Catholic country. Providence 
used a flock of birds to lure his ships to the South, and 
still held this continent in reservation for others. 

Why did not Europe, wild with excitement and the 
spirit of adventure following the announcement that a 
new continent had been discovered, immediately turn a 
stream of immigration into this land? Why did a whole 
century lapse after Columbus before God lifted the gates 


of entrance to North America? What Longfellow calls 
16 


THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 17 


“the living seed of a nation” was not yet matured for 
the planting of the proposed civilization here. That hun- 
dred and more years between Columbus and the Cavalier, 
the Puritan and the Pilgrim settlements, is one of the 
most marvelous providential centuries in all the annals of 
time. See what was taking place in Europe during that 
century ! 

Most marvelous is the relation of personages, periods 
and events in the Old World to the beginning of history 
in the New. As divine Providence began to get things 
ready for the Reformation in Europe, he began to point 
the way to America. Luther was born in 1483, Zwingli 
and Tyndale in 1484, and America was discovered in 
1492, when Michelangelo, seventeen years of age, was 
taking up his chisel and brush and becoming conscious of 
his genius, and Raphael was a boy nine years old. John 
Calvin was born in 1509, seventeen years after America 
was discovered, and John Knox in 1505. America 
was found in such times as these, but Providence did 
not favor immediate settlement of North America. To 
have done so before these great spirits had revolutionized 
European thought would have been to make this a Romish 
country. The Roman Catholic type would have been 
established before the Reformations of Germany and Eng: 
land had produced their results, and there would have been 
no land to which the persecuted Protestant and evangeli- 
cal Christian could flee and establish the civil democracy 
and the revived Christianity which inspirited them. 
The people were not prepared for spiritual freedom, and 
the English tongue was not fully ready to become the 
vehicle of the Truth. In 1517 Luther nailed his theses 
to the church in Wittenberg and in 1521 he met his ac- 
cusers at Worms. In 1526 Tyndale’s Bible was circulated 
in England, and in 1534 Luther’s translation was ready 
for the reader. Those were mighty days “on ages telling.” 
In 1564 Shakespeare, who was to fix the form of and 
forever give dignity to the English language, was born, 
and, though he knew it not, was a chief agent of Provi- 


18 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


dence for the extension of evangelical religion. The 
Massacre of St. Bartholomew was perpetrated in 1572, 
Cromwell was born in 1599, and Jamestown was settled 
and Protestantism began its career in America in 1607. 
The Dutch, bringing Calvin’s theology, settled New York, 
New Jersey and Pennsylvania in 1609, and the Pilgrims 
arrived at Plymouth Rock in 1620. Thus was America 
preserved and prepared to serve as a refuge for those 
who had come into the light of the gospel, and for a field 
in which the principles of that gospel could be planted and 
guarded.* 

Thrilled by new and mighty thoughts, under impulses 
and emotions produced by the discovery of great truths 
of the universe and the greater discoveries of grace, men 
must have room for action. A continent would be needed 
for the demonstration which God was preparing to make. 
Evangelical religion must have unfettered opportunity to 
benefit by all these circumstances and to find a free and 
full expression under their inspiration. When the full- 
ness of time had come, “a new land arose out of the sea 
to serve as a bulwark and reserve for the age of reforma- 
tion.” 

God had reserved an asylum for his witnesses to the 
truth which was emerging from the rubbish of supersti- 
tion and error of Europe. When persecution was raging in 
Europe,—in the Netherlands, in Spain, in England,—then 
the ocean began to whiten with'the sails of pilgrim fleets, 
and providential winds bore them to our Atlantic shores. 
No decoys turned these refugees of hope out of their 
course as they had turned Columbus. 

Later both Spanish and French Catholicism tried to 
make America their possession, but failed because the 
God of nations was not their ally in such an enterprise. 
There was at one time in America a “New Spain,” a 
“New France,” and even a Russian America on our North 


1 The above paragraph is adapted from Chapter I, “The Mission of 
Our Nation,” by J. F. Love, where the discussion of this providential 
history is more extended. 


THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 19 


Pacific coast, as well as a ““New England.”’ Why did “New 
France” and “‘New Spain” disappear and “‘New England” 
survive? Each was greatly larger than New England. 
There is but one answer. A divine Providence favored 
New England, and the evangelical Christianity which 
New England fostered. The Roman Catholic “New 
France” required that “anyone settling in New France 
must be a Catholic.” Says Bishop Galloway of the 
French to the North, “The defeat of Montcalm on the 
Heights of Abraham was a pivot on which turned the 
modern history of the world.’ And the historian W. I’. 
Lord calls that event “almost miraculous.” Wolfe paid 
a great price for that decision, but he made a great pur- 
chase. William Cullen Bryant says of the Spanish effort 
in the Southwest to dominate America, “Fortunately for 
the progress of the human race and the future history of 
North America all their efforts to gain a permanent foot- 
hold north of the Gulf of Mexico were in the main un- 
successful,” 

These controlling and directing providences are still 
further manifest in the remarkable incidents which at- 
tended the Louisiana Purchase, the acquisition of the 
Oregon country, etc. The eye of Providence seems to 
have been constantly upon this land and nation, and the 
hand of Providence always outstretched in interposition 
at every crisis of the Republic. 

For the suggestion of what our land would be had 
Spanish or French Catholicism realized its ambitions to 
subjugate it to Rome, the condition of Mexico and of 
French Catholicism in Louisiana may furnish a hint. 
Roman Catholicism has succeeded in keeping ninety per 
cent of Rome’s dear children in Louisiana illiterate until 
this day, notwithstanding the belt of evangelical enlighten- 
ment which surrounds Rome’s preserve in the Mississippi 
Valley. The French and the Spanish are, as all men 
know, capable of a high degree of culture. It is Rome’s 
responsibility that such people are kept in ignorance. 
Rome prefers darkness rather than light. 


20 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


God had kept this continent as a refuge for evangelical 
men and women whom Europe could not tolerate, and had 
in preparation for them endowed this continent with rich 
resources. George Washington said in his first inaugural 
address, “No people can be found to acknowledge and 
adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men 
more than the people of the United States; every step by 
which they have advanced to the character of an inde- 
pendent nation seems to have been indicated by some 
token of providential agency.”’ Providence worked in 
accordance with the divine purpose through every step of 
this history to establish here a democracy inspired and 
supported by evangelical Christianity; but God was not 
concerned with America simply as a refuge for the perse- 
cuted disciples of evangelical faith who were scurried out 
of Europe. The evidence is quite as strong that all this 
providential care was with the intent that, nurtured here, 
democracy and evangelical Christianity should minister 
their benefits to all peoples, and to Europe in particular, 
when the times were ripe for this retaliation of Europe’s 
hate for evangelical Christianity and hurt to evangelical 
Christians. ‘The Jamestown Colony was chartered for 
one reason, that it “under the Providence of God might 
tend to the glory of His Divine Majesty in propagating 
the Christian religion.” 

God was throwing guards about his people while they 
built here a home base, broad and deep and strong. This 
was not because the Anglo-Saxons, who built the founda- 
tions of this nation, were in a peculiar sense the darlings 
of God’s heart, nor because God was chiefly concerned 
with democracy, a great home base and sumptuousness 
for the Christians of America. God’s chief concern was 
for a base in America strong enough to carry out his 
providential purpose in the greatest Christian campaign 
of the ages for the winning of the world to Christ when 
at last the opportune moment should come. He was con- 
cerned that once America by providential favor was strong 
-and capable, and the world in its need was ready and call- 


THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 21 


ing, American churches should answer that call which the 
churches of Christ nowhere else in the world are so well 
able to answer. The moment has now come, and Ameri- 
can Christianity with a strong home base faces its su- 
preme and sublime mission. We shall now show to men 
and angels how God’s favored people can meet a high 
hour of destiny with courage and loyalty, or we shall show 
them how vain and disappointing have been God’s peculiar 
blessings and dependence upon us. 

The home base of Christianity which does not support 
the work of Christ at a time like this is no base at all. 
If we have builded well, and God’s favors have not been 
bestowed in vain, we shall at this hour launch and main- 
tain such a foreign mission offensive as men and angels 
never witnessed. 

Surely we can say with the man of God of the olden 
time, “Hitherto hath the Lord helped us,” and with Ru- 
pert Brooke, 


“Now God be thanked 
Who matched us with this hour.” 


Every aspect of the home situation viewed impartially 
and seriously shows that American Christianity is ready 
for a great international Christian service, lacking only 
the mind to undertake it and the will to prosecute it. 

But if there is any lack in the home churches of that 
which qualifies them to meet home conditions, and to dis- 
charge their pressing obligation to the rest of the world, 
that lack is a spiritual one which Foreign Missions, more 
than any other activity, will supply. A large foreign mis- 
sion program will not hurt anything that needs to be done 
at home. Foreign Missions yields peculiar and rich divi- 
dends to individuals and churches who participate liberally 
in it. Dr. E. C. Routh says, “Foreign Missions is the 
only enterprise which will float all the enterprises and lift 
them above the water line of danger.” The appeal of 
Foreign Missions will more completely enlist for Chris- 


22 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


tian service and more warmly bind to Christ and his pro- 
gram the men and women of our churches, and elicit 
more resources for all the work of the churches than any 
other appeal which we can make. Of course the foreign 
mission appeal should not be used to get money which is 
not distributed to Foreign Missions in proportion to the 
strength of the foreign mission appeal. 

In his speceh before the Missionary Conference in 
Washington, D. C., January, 1925, President Calvin 
Coolidge said: 


“The Christian churches and government have no greater 
responsibility than to make sure that the best, and not the 
worst, of which Christian society is capable shall be given 
to the other peoples. To accomplish this is the dominating 
purpose of your missionary movement. It is one of the most 
important, the most absolutely necessary, movements in the 
world to-day. We shall ourselves be the gainers, both 
spiritually and materially, by our efforts in behalf of those 
whom we shall thus help. The early Christians fairly burned 
with missionary zeal.” 


The peril is not that we shall get for Foreign Missions 
money which is needed at home; the peril is that the spirit 
of selfishness and numbness will hold fast numbers of 
church members in its death grip, and dwarf the whole 
budget of church benevolences. The great need is an 
appeal so large, so unselfish, so commanding, so worthy 
and compelling, that it will touch the fountains of Chris- 
tian generosity and release streams of benevolences which 
shall refresh every nook and corner of the home field and 
overflow in rivers of blessing to the uttermost parts of 
the earth. American Christians have all the money that 
is needed to meet all their financial obligations to the 
Kingdom of Christ. We have scarcely tapped the ma- 
terial and rightful resources of the Kingdom of God 
which the hands of church members in this land hold. 
American Christians, as no other Christians in the world, 
are the stewards both of God’s money and God’s gospel 


THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 23 


which are now needed for God’s cause. The first consider- 
ation is to find a work and a motive big enough and strong 
enough to break up Christian selfishness and to release 
for God’s use and direction his part of that which, under 
his blessing, American Christian men have acquired. 
There is no other appeal so big, so strong, so true to the 
heart and commission of Christ, as the appeal for a lost 
world. When the churches of Christ take anything less 
than Foreign Missions for a leader for stimulating Chris- 
tian liberality, they defeat themselves and the cause which 
they have promoted to the place which God has assigned 
to Foreign Missions. 

Therefore, setting Foreign Missions in the supreme 
place to which Providence has lifted it in this hour does 
not belittle, and will not impoverish, any home enterprise. 
It is, rather, applying the highest wisdom to the relief of 
home enterprises and institutions, while it is discharging a 
bounden duty to a world in sore distress. To be sure, no 
institution or division of the home task ought in such an 
hour as this to be kept on parity with Foreign Missions. 
To do so is to deny Foreign Missions that preéminence 
which Scripture, time and circumstance give it. But there 
is not in this a suggestion that anything which we are 
doing at home for Christ should be abandoned or allowed 
to suffer. 

The call of Foreign Missions is a call to immediate 
action. Foreign Missions cannot wait longer. Never be- 
fore this hour was the destiny of the world so pivoted 
upon immediate duty and upon the duty of American 
Christianity in particular. We must act and act quickly 
and decisively if we would discharge our obligation. 
Foreign Missions is at this time a duty and responsibility 
which cannot be deferred. Indeed, we doubt that there is in 
the history of evangelical Christianity of America a more 
tragic delinquency than the failure of the American 
churches to set Foreign Missions to the front of all their 
efforts and enterprises immediately after the armistice 
and to maintain Foreign Missions on an incomparably 


24 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


great scale during the past six years. For many Ameri- 
can churches there will certainly come out of these years 
ghosts of neglected duty to haunt them in the years which 
are ahead. We fear that some of these ghosts will peer 
from the nookeries and walk the aisles of some great tem- 
ples for whose building and elegant equipment Foreign 
Missions has had to wait while broken men and women, 
without refuge, have gone down to death in millions. 
Some of these ghosts, we fear, will chatter condemnation 
in some American halls and committee rooms where per- 
centages have been fixed and designations have been made 
for things which, in an hour so potential and portentous 
for Foreign Missions, could far better than Foreign Mis- 
sions have waited. The historians of Christianity are 
certain to record these years as years which shifted su- 
preme emphasis from home to international duty. For 
some certainly there can be no other truthful record than 
that of default before the divine summons, marvelous op- 
portunity and human importunity. 

Foreign Missions cannot, we say, wait. The call has 
been sounded, the issues of this warfare tremble in the 
balance, easy to be tipped in favor of Christianity but with 
unmistakable forces gathering to tip them the other way 
if the American churches prolong their hesitation. The 
bugles of war have sounded. War measures must now 
take precedence. These are not,usual times. Foreign 
Missions has become an extraordinary duty. This is a 
supreme moment for using the home base to support a 
world campaign. We must engage the enemy now. The 
necessity for volunteers and for equipment of the army, 
for transport of men and supplies, is upon us in this very 
moment. Test of vision among our leaders, of Kingdom 
loyalty and Christian world patriotism, is being made. If 
American Christianity does not quickly respond to the 
loud call of God to press the battle of the ages to the 
gates, our glory will depart with our opportunity. 

Dr. Cornelius H. Patton has uttered a real warning in 
these words which ministers of Christ may well repeat 


THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 25 


with emphasis to their congregations, “Let the church 
beware of Christianity de luxe.” 

Several years ago when the writer was a member of the 
church of which Dr. George W. Truett is pastor, a church 
which has been made great through great leadership, ne- 
cessity had arisen for the enlargement of the house of 
worship to hold the increasing congregations. To provide 
this necessity a debt of $140,000 had been incurred. 
Some members of the church were consumed by anxiety 
for this debt, and felt that missions ought to wait under 
such circumstances; but the pastor had vision and cour- 
age, too. Standing before his people on a Sunday morn- 
ing and pouring out his heart in passionate appeal for a 
worthy contribution to missions by his church, he reached 
a climax of Christian fervor in words like these which I 
can never forget: 


“Let no man, woman or child in this congregation with- 
hold his best from Christ for missions to-day because there 
is a debt on this church, I would rather stand bareheaded 
under our scorching Texas sun, or suffer Texas northers to 
beat upon my head in leadership of a missionary church, 
than to preach to a church which is not missionary 
in the finest temple that you could rear above my head.” 


He led and his people followed. Christian men always 
follow such leadership. 

If the churches of Christ in America, turning their eyes 
away from the signs of the times, give themselves now to 
self-pampering and to providing for themselves luxuries 
and sumptuous circumstance while this marvelous foreign 
mission opportunity goes by, they will defeat the purposes 
of God for America and entail upon Christianity, world 
without end, a stigma which will be pointed out as a re- 
proach by nations whom we might to-day make our allies 
in this holy warfare. “Beware,” yes, indeed, beware, “of 
Christianity de luxe,” of a Christianity of show and pomp 
and glory while the world is panting for breath and dying 


26 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


of starvation, and we have Bread of Life enough and to 
spare. 

Speaking of the emergency which confronts the Mis- 
sionary Society, the Watchman-Examiner makes this 
sensible statement : 


“The emergency exists not because we do not have the 
money but because the money has us. Slaves to the de- 
mands of the cost of high living, we have given up the higher 
life. Eager for creature comforts, we have shunned the 
call to heroic service, and fearful of the cost of the best, we 
have spent our labor for that which satisfieth not.” 


We need homes for our families, but we do not need 
palaces. We need food, but we can dispense with many 
luxuries. We need dress, but God calls us to forego a 
thousand extravagances. We need houses of worship, but 
we do not need cathedrals. The denomination which has 
surpassed all denominations in the erection of great tem- 
ples, the display of ornamentation, the exhibit of stained 
glass, and clamored for the front place on the public 
squares of the great cities, is to-day spiritually the deadest 
thing that bears the name Christian. Then let us keep 
ourselves under guard lest love for show and comfort 
run away with us, and we run away from our supreme 
duty and opportunity. 


CHAPTER III 
SIGN TWO: THE DISTRESS OF THE WORLD 


The bugle call to war in 1917 was not more distinct 
and commanding than was the call to Foreign Missions 
which was made on Armistice Day 1918. The one call 
was to slaughter men; the other was to save them. The 
call to war was made in the name of democracy; the call 
to missions was made in the name of Christ and the lost. 
In the first instance we were called to help allies and de- 
feat enemies of democracy ; in the missionary call we were 
summoned to the service of every creature, allies and 
enemies, for this world and that which is to come. 

If we save men, we save both them and democracy. 
Our lads were willing to fight and die in the service for 
that to which they gave their splendid young lives. Are 
we as ready for sacrifice as they? Did not they, in the 
response which they made, and did not the country, in the 
resources which it so quickly assembled for a campaign 
of death, set the churches an example of telling sugges- 
tiveness? 

Think of the distress-call! We quote from Mr. Sher- 
wood Eddy: 


“Professor Bogart estimates 26,000,000 combatants and 
non-combatants as the total death toll of the war. This 
would mean a city of 16,585, like Ithaca, blotted out every 
day of the war. To this must be added 

20,000,000 wounded 
9,000,000 war orphans 
5,000,000 war widows 

10,000,000 refugees. 

“These appalling figures, however, do not include the in- 
direct losses from revolution, famine and pestilence, the 

27 


28 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


increased death rate and the total losses due to the war. Ac- 
cording to the Swedish Society for the Study of Social Con- 
sequences of the War, the total loss must be put down at 
40,000,000 lives... . Take the single item of 10,000,000 
‘refugees.’ That means ten million human beings driven 
homeless, and often penniless, out of Armenia, Turkey, 
Syria, Belgium, France, Russia, East Prussia and the battle 
areas where armies marched and countermarched.” 


The war covered Europe with cemeteries of the dead, 
and left it with legions of maimed and halt and blind. 
But more, it robbed Europe of fortunes slowly accumu- 
lated through years of patient toil, and laid upon the backs 
of the bereaved and broken such burden of taxes as were 
never carried by men before. 

Prof. Bogart, as quoted by Mr. Sherwood Eddy, 
says, ‘The direct cost of war was 186 billion dollars and 
the direct and indirect cost, 337 billion dollars.” He cal- 
culates that we burned up $9,000,000 an hour, or $215,- 
000,000 a day, during the war, or the equal of $20,000 an 
hour from the birth of Christ until the end of 1925! At 
the call of war this staggering sum of money was fur- 
nished. How insignificant our missionary offerings at 
the call of Christ and a lost world compared with these 
figures! 

Christian Missions is the antithesis and the only effec- 
tual antidote to war. The war left both our allies and our 
enemies in sore need of our Christian help, and the gospel 
is the one sure consolation for them. In many respects, 
every nation involved in the war suffered losses, demoralli- 
zation, and other consequences which it will take genera- 
tions to repair, let democracy do the best democracy can 
for the nations who have gained it as their reward. 

No audible voice from heaven could be more unmis- 
takable than the call of God to America in the circum- 
stances and conditions which have afflicted the world since 
the close of the war. That war left a world imploringly 
in need of Christ. Even the political and national aims 
and ambitions of the war are certain of frustration with- 


THE DISTRESS OF THE WORLD 29 


out Christ’s influence and the saving essence of the gospel 
in the amalgam of peace plans for the world. Only the 
Prince of Peace can destroy envy, arrest strife and abolish 
war; and only the gospel contains his principles of peace. 
Dr. Robert E. Speer in ‘““The Gospel and the New World’’ 
says: 


“Old things are passed away everywhere. The old Eu- 
rope is gone, and a new Europe is come with new maps, new 
national and racial divisions, new economic problems and 
relationships and discontents, new political principles and 
fallacies, new ambitions and enmities and fears, new social 
ideals, new disabilities, new hopes, new despairs.” 


Again the same author says: 


“The new world needs him and that is all it does need. 
It needs his spirit of trust and brotherhood, his forgiveness 
and freedom, his principle of world organization, his power 
of re-creation, the fullness of the Gospel of redeeming love 
and life. “What we lack in our country,’ writes a thought- 
ful Japanese, ‘is Christianity in power and in resurrection.’ 
This is the whole world’s lack.” 


A fact which should be well lodged in the minds of 
Christian men is that God always calls his people to service 
in the groans and needs of men. It was “a man of Mace- 
donia” who uttered the call of God to Paul at Troas to 
come into Europe and “help us.’”’ Luke says, after reflect- 
ing upon the call of the man of Macedonia, “We en- 
deavored to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that 
the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel unto them.” 
In the man’s call God had called, and God’s call was to 
preach the gospel to those whose need had been voiced. 
If we would go with God to the service of men, we must 
have quick ears and responsive souls for the calls of men 
in their needs. God does not break the silence for any 
man except as he breaks it in the call of human need 
which gives us the opportunity for Christian service. Men 
and women in their darkness and distress, destitute of the 


30 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


gospel, issue to the churches of Christ the Lord’s own call 
and emphasize his ancient command. 

The call of Europe for our invincible doughboys, our 
guns and flying machines: in 1917 was by no means so 
clear or convincing for Christian men as is the call of God 
for Christian compassion and service in this year 1925. 
It is to make plain this call that the signals of God are fly- 
ing. Nation after nation has, these six years, sent out to 
America the S.0.S. From the day the armistice was 
signed, God has been signaling to Christian America for 
a missionary advance not only in Europe but in all the 
world. The whole world has been affected and much im- 
periled by the war. Millions were ruined financially, and 
millions have seen the last earthly hope, personal and na- 
tional, fade until an absolute blank despair has fallen upon 
their spirits and their future. The cry of their need is the 
call of God. 

The world’s deepest woe is not produced by temporal, 
material, bodily need; the great pang is that which con- 
sumes the minds and souls of men. Some of us have, since 
the war, had men look at us through gaunt visages and 
out of hungry eyes, while they begged for Bibles and the 
gospel for their people. They have told us that, as acute 
as was the pang of their unfed stomachs, and as chilled 
as were their poorly clad bodies, the greatest need of their 
people was the pure Word of God and a hope which could 
sustain their drooping spirits. America has done much, 
if not her full duty, in gifts of food, clothing and money 
to stay the pangs of hunger and warm the emaciated 
bodies of men, women and children. We would not ig- 
nore this, and the nations to which we have shown pity 
will never forget it. The compassion which sent cargoes 
of food and clothing across the seas was itself a compas- 
sion begotten of the spirit of Christ in American citizen- 
ship, although all citizens who gave may not have recog- 
nized the genesis of their impulse to give. 

We have given material things; but, alas, many among 
us stand indicted before the signals of God to missionary 


THE DISTRESS OF THE WORLD 31 


giving which have been raised these six years. We have 
made advance in foreign mission giving, but not in pro- 
portion to the extraordinary call and need and opportu- 
nity, and not by any means in proportion to our increases 
to home enterprises and home phases of our work. We 
have not done more than meagerly to begin the discharge 
of our spiritual obligation to the world in its great spiri- 
tual distress and need. It is a fact to make some Ameri- 
can Christians not to blush but to bleach. In all their 
sumptuous living, and frequently with large religious giv- 
ing, they have not seen, or, seeing, have not heeded the 
signals of God and the spiritual needs of the nations. 
Christian men have given millions to single institutions at 
home, which, say all you will for these institutions, are of 
minor importance and have small necessities compared 
with whole nations of men lost in sin and in spiritual de- 
spair as well as intellectual darkness, crying to us for the 
light of the gospel of Christ. But it is not our gifts to 
anything that condemn us in this hour and will condemn 
us in the last hour; it is our selfishness, our blindness, our 
wilfulness, the call of God and humanity to the contrary 
notwithstanding. Our home benevolences have not by 
any means been as large as they ought to be, but the chief 
shame and condemnation of millions of church members 
at home is that their concern for an imperiled world has 
been callous, and they have not heeded the voice and sum- 
mons of God. 

We gave our sons with pride and abandon until the 
war ended, and then many Americans seemed willing to 
leave the world to drift and to drive before the tides of fate 
and the winds of fury which were fanned by international 
jealousy, race hatred and ungodly diplomatic rivalries. 
We have in large measure withheld the best gift we had 
for Europe and the nations. If we rely upon guns and 
gases, flying machines and submarines to save this world, 
or any part of it, we ourselves shall live to rue our philos- 
ophy of civilization. If the war has one lesson more than 
another to teach us, it is that war does not end war and 


32 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


does not make democracy safe for the world. To the 
contrary, war sows the seeds of war. And war has left 
not only such a heritage of misery and hopelessness for 
many as no living man has ever seen before, but it has 
left such boiling hates, such harassing suspicions, such bit- 
ter envies, as to cause alarm for the safety of the world. 
Not only are the enemies of our allies suspicious of them 
and of us, but ally now suspects ally, and the world is 
rapidly returning to its sly and baneful diplomacies which 
signify no good for the future. Statesmanship itself is 
infected with time serving, an example of that “‘self-ex- 
pression” which deplores human depravity and is itself a 
malady and a pestilence. Men with their ears to the 
ground in search of votes are not likely to hear the voice 
of God which calls in their generation. 

The war has left us a scarred and bruised world. The 
heroic sons of the nation, who in the dreadful carnage 
paid the price of their patriotism, impressed the horrors 
of war; but millions of the bereaved, the maimed, and 
other millions still who have had all their plans deranged, 
in their frenzy nurture a Christless purpose to “get even.” 
These things speak convincingly of the futility of war as 
a means of helping the world toward peace and brother- 
hood. 

The only remedy, we repeat, for the world in its pres- 
ent condition, the only corrective of conditions which 
cause war, the only force which can set up and maintain 
true democracy anywhere and adjust autonomous democ- 
racies one to another, is the spirit which is fostered by the 
gospel of Christ. If in this marvelous hour we refuse 
to hear God’s call to evangelize the world, we may expect 
present conditions to wax worse until the world is on fire 
again with the holocaust of war; and we may expect to go, 
as those religions are sure to go which through the cen- 
turies have studied and planned a sumptuousness for 
themselves while millions were living and dying without 
God and without hope in sight of their gorgeous and 
gilded temples. To the junk heap these religions must 


THE DISTRESS OF THE WORLD 33 


go when the world learns a little better what religion is 
for and to discriminate a little more keenly between the 
pretense and the practice of the religion of Christ. Indif- 
ference to the sin, the ignorance, the poverty, the trouble 
of the people makes Christian profession a monstrous mis- 
nomer. Boasted institutions and fabulous endowments, 
elaborate and ornate temples, shall be for any evangelical 
denomination in America which fails to heed the call of 
God in this hour but symbols of vanity and monuments 
to its shame. What means it to boast of increasing num- 
bers in our home churches, great buildings, fine choirs, and 
even large activity, if the service for Christ in the lands 
which most need him is not correspondingly great? In 
Europe thousands have died of starvation in sight of 
cathedrals which are famed for their architectural gran- 
deur, and which were filled with silver and gold, with rich 
tapestries and embroideries, with gems and jewels, with 
useless changes of priestly wardrobes, miters, and other 
paraphernalia of fabulous market value, if sold to the rich. 
The rich Americans would: have competed one with an- 
other to buy these hoarded vanities for huge sums which 
would have enabled the so-called ‘‘churches,’ Greek and 
Roman Catholic, to feed starving men, women and chil- 
dren. But, no, ecclesiastical pomp and vanity and institu- 
tional Christianity must not be sacrificed to Christian ser- 
vice! Our luxuries and extravagances, some of them re- 
ligious, may easily betray us into a sin as black as that 
which will smirch these pretentious churches forever here- 
after. 

If the spiritual distress of the world does not mean 
enough to us to empty us of our vanity and cause us to 
forego some of these things in our home religion, grace 
has not completed its work in us. If spiritual needs which 
cannot wait may not have the preference, we are sure to 
be betrayed into the sin which has blackened the name of 
some great religious institutions. They have not only 
hoarded useless wealth when their human brothers were 
starving, but they have maintained a pomp and glory in 


34 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


the lands of the world while fostering superstition, ig- 
norance and poverty. Evangelical Christianity has in the 
eyes of all observers been in marked contrast to all this. 
But there is need to-day of a warning voice in America, 
clarion and courageous, to call American Christianity 
away from self-pampering. We cannot, without guilt, 
make ourselves entirely comfortable in our own homes 
and in our houses of worship while the world is in ex- 
treme need of the rudiments of the gospel. 

How cool, how callous seems the indifference of many 
to the world’s plight compared with the spirit of Horace 
Pitkin facing martyrdom in a burning building in China, 
thus closing a life devoted to Foreign Missions His last 
message to his wife was “Train little Horace to be a mis- 
sionary.”’ What a contrast between that passion and 
much that we are seeing! Sooner or later our luxuries 
will corrode and our souls will suffer beyond repair if we 
continue our indifference to the needs and distress of the 
world. Says Dr. J. H. Franklin in “Christianity in a 
New World”: 


“Are we sufficient for such an hour? Are we ready to 
share with men everywhere the richest blessings we enjoy? 
For such a time nothing less than the Cross of Christ will 
suffice. If we accept it personally as the divine dynamic 
and lose ourselves under its spell, we shall give our prayers, 
our gold, our sons and daughters, ourselves, our all, to re- 
veal Christ everywhere, by oral proclamation and every 
needed form of service. Our conventional standards of dis- 
cipleship are inadequate. God is calling to us to join in the 
holiest of crusades of service to the very ends of the earth. 
The hour calls for larger vision, new standards of devotion, 
and greater plans. Most of all, it calls for a new acceptance 
of the divine dynamic, the Cross of Christ.” 


Says Dr. Speer: 
“Was there ever a day when, not for all men one by one, 


for the wants of their individual homes and hearts, but in 
one great mass of want, the world’s need of Christ was so 


THE DISTRESS OF THE WORLD 35 


sharp and imperious as it is to-day? Who but Jesus Christ 
can ever bind this torn and discordant world together? We 
tried to do it with trade, and it could not be done. We tried 
to do it with diplomacy, but diplomacy failed. We have 
tried to do it with secular education, but secular education 
has been unequal to the task. There is only one way in 
which the world ever can be united in one: ‘And I, if I be 
lifted up from the earth,’ said Jesus Christ, ‘will draw all 
men unto Me.’ In the one Head of all humanity, the one 
Shepherd of the whole flock of every race and every people 
and every tongue—only there can any hope of human unity 
ever be found. In a day when we are weary of strife and 
hatred and war, the need of the world for Christ protests 
against any abridgment of our will and purpose to share 
him now with all the life of men.” 


CHAPTER IV 
SIGN THREE: THE DISILLUSIONMENTS OF THE WORLD 


The war not only took many things away from men; 
it destroyed their confidence in some of those things 
which have passed and in some things which remain. 
Autocracy has passed and in its old forms will perhaps 
never return. It was an outworn garment. It had be- 
come threadbare, eaten by ideas and ideals which had 
found in this modern world a climate congenial to their 
growth. Autocracy could not longer serve men and na- 
tions. The time had come for a changed social, economic 
and political order. Men will no longer risk their fortunes 
upon autocracy; but they will build as vainly upon a 
democracy if it does not rest upon a religious foundation 
and is not erected of the structural steel of personal man- 
hood tempered by the spirit of Christ and after the divine 
plans for human conduct and government. If personal- 
ity is a unit of value in society and nation building, it 
must be raised to its highest values and surest dependable- 
ness. Then is our Christian task made plain. There is 
one alchemy only which can turn the puddlepots of present 
molten humanity into the structural steel which will bear 
the weight and shield the treasures of modern civilization. 


“Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid which 
is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 3:11). 

“Therefore, thus saith the Lord God, Behold I lay in 
Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious stone, 
a sure foundation; he that believeth shall not make haste. 
Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the 
plummet; and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, 


and the waters shall overflow the hiding place” (Isa. 28:16, © 


17). be 


THE DISILLUSIONMENTS OF THE WORLD 37 


Build on anything else and we build on shifting sand. 
This much millions of men have learned in the experiences. 
and exigencies of war and since the war. To say that 
the citizens of a Christian country have come to realize 
that Christ is a necessary foundation for business, so- 
ciety and nationality and that character touched by Christ 
is needed for the superstructure, is to state but half the 
truth. Many of the brightest minds of unbelieving 
heathen are affirming that heathenism is too unsubstan- 
tial a thing to bear the weight of modern civilization and 
support its institutions. Members of the Japanese Par- 
liament, distinguished editors, educators and captains of 
industry are declaring that the heathen nations and na- 
tions long dominated by semi-heathenism or pseudo- 
Christianity must lay new moral foundations for national 
security and international diplomacy and commerce. 

Recently the writer was invited to converse with a 
Japanese gentleman trained for big international business. 
We found him in one of our theological schools. He 
has had years of business experience and has gained a large 
outlook on life and international commerce. In the pur- 
suit of his work in America he had contact with Christian 
business associates who did not despise the foreign mis- 
sion opportunity which a Japanese citizen in their midst 
gave them. He was won to Christ, and here is the testi- 
mony which he gave the writer: 


“After I had found Christ and come into the possession 
of the Christian experience, I was transferred from those 
associations where I won Christ to another place and posi- 
tion of responsibility, I found welling up in me a great de- 
sire to unbosom myself to somebody who could understand 
my experience. My association was now largely with men 

of my own country who were strangers to my experience. 
The anxiety for communion with kindred spirits became in- 
tense. I heard much and saw much in my business associa- 
tion which distressed me, and to which my new experience 
could not be reconciled. I chanced to hear of this institution 
and I thought surely I ought to find in the company of men 


38 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


who are gathered there those to whom I can unbosom my- 
self, and who will understand my experience. I have not 
been disappointed.” 


We asked him what use he purposed to make of his 
Christian life. He said: 


“My experience in business has led me to see that the fu- 
ture of Japan is conditioned upon her international com- 
merce. I cannot see that there is any assured prosperity for 
my beloved country without it. But my business experience 
has led me to the conviction that if the international business 
of Japan is to grow to those proportions which will insure 
the future of the nation, a new moral foundation must be 
found for Japanese commerce. The present moral ideals 
which control Japan and Japanese commerce will not hold 
the strain of the great business which Japan must do. In 
my Christian experience I am sure that I have found the 
moral foundation which Japan needs. I expect to train my- 
self here in this school and then go back to Japan to do a 
work of Christian evangelism among the business men of 
Japan. This I conceive to be the best use I can make of my 
Christian life, and it is the prompting of my Christian ex- 
perience.” 


This man has become disillusioned of business shrewd- 
ness and skill as guaranty of commercial success. 

Among the disillusionments of the past half-dozen years 
is disillusionment of many as regards some of the very 
old, very pretentious, and very showy forms of religion. 
The war gave the religions of the world a supreme chance 
to prove themselves the agencies of God in the service of 
humanity. How did they stand the ordeal? With what 
faithfulness and comparative faithfulness, devotion and 
efficiency did they meet their opportunity and discharge 
their obligations? Which religion above all others has 
been vindicated as a serving agency by the exigencies of 
these years? Everyone knows that the war and post-war 
days sifted the religions of the world as wheat is sifted. 


THE DISILLUSIONMENTS OF THE WORLD 39 


Much chaff was discovered by onlookers—some of it 
hitherto covered by a vast amount of pretentiousness and 
lofty claims. There are millions of disillusioned ex- 
Catholics to-day, and these are, for the most part, from 
the most intelligent of those who were nurtured in that 
faith. Some of these, trained for the priesthood and 
within the mystic and confidential shrine of Rome, dis- 
covered the emptiness and sham of the institution as a 
claimant to the religion of Christ. 

The Greek Church in all its branches, though lacking in 
the opportunity which Romanism had to serve or benefit 
by the war, nevertheless found in the war and the re- 
sponsible days succeeding the war, a crucible which has 
tried it, too. Like Rome it had before the war been the 
friend of the rich and mighty, and while in profession of 
friendship for the poor it fostered poverty and illiteracy 
throughout every section of its undisputed domain. It has 
been found limp and undependable before a great crisis 
of the world and of great human need. It is inefficient 
and unadaptable to circumstances which lay stressful 
claims upon religion. It has lost prestige, and millions 
who once thought it to be the one true religious institution 
in the world have in the days through which civilization 
has been passing these ten years been disillusioned. 

How about Mohammedanism? War gave it, too, an 
opportunity and a testing. How has it come out of the 
ordeal? What demonstration has Mohammedanism given 
of its value and serviceableness in time of human and 
world necessity? A plain answer to that question is on 
the lips of everybody. More than ever the men of intel- 
lectual and moral enlightenment have come to look upon 
Mohammedanism as the religious monstrosity of this age. 
All men know of its barbarities. Accepted by the Turk 
and put into practice by him, he became the human butcher 
of the world. Mohammedanism is the one religion which 
has the slaughter of other religionists as a creed. Mob 
violence, wherever it exists elsewhere than in Moham- 


40 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


medan countries, is contrary to law, but with the Mo- 
hammedan Turk it is according to the most sacred law, a 
prescribed observance of his religious book. 

Mohammedans, especially the Turks, sought to use the 
war to fortify themselves, and in doing so built a monu- ~ 
ment cemented in blood which will stand an everlasting 
accusation in its path to progress. Peoples and nations 
will now and forever know that they must, from the first 
approach, decline the hand of Islam if they would escape 
the bludgeon. Of all the religions in the world Moham- 
medanism is the bloodiest, the most pitiless. The blood 
of Armenian women and little children will, until eternity 
dawns, cry to God against Mohammedanism and the 
Turk. Self-respecting nations will draw their skirts 
about them when they meet the murderous Islamic Turk 
in the streets of international commerce and diplomacy. 
If a people and a religion can by any circumstances be dis- 
graced, then the Turk and Mohammedanism are dis- 
graced world without end. Those who show respect for 
this religious institution, and for the Turk so long as he 
professes and exalts it to the place of religion, cast moral 
reflection upon themselves. Decency cannot dally with 
anything so foul as Turkish Mohammedanism demon- 
strated itself to be during the war and following the war. 
The religious and moral views of Mohammed came to 
their legitimate fruit in the modern Turk and his behavior 
toward Armenian women and children. The world will 
have to lapse in moral attainments and moral sense, and 
sink to depths of degradation which imagination cannot 
fathom, before it can ever reconcile the behavior of the 
Turks with religion. The only escape from this disgrace 
is through renunciation of Mohammedanism because 
it was this, held as a religion and put into practice, that 
won infamy for the Turk. The Turkish people are prob- 
ably neither better nor worse than other people, except for 
the Mohammedan religion. 

We need not take the space for a characterization of 
any heathen religion in the world. Many of them have 


THE DISILLUSIONMENTS OF THE WORLD 41 


ethical codes to regulate human society and personal con- 
duct which so far exceed Mohammedanism as to forbid 
comparison. Nevertheless, they are all simply negligible 
as religious and moral forces at a time of desperate reli- 
gious need throughout the world. Buddhism, Hinduism, 
and the rest are inane as religious ministrants to a dis- 
traught humanity. 

The only religion in all the world which gave devotion, 
unselfish abandon, practical, uncalculating and indiscrimi- 
nate service to the soldiers during the war and to the 
world’s distressed millions after the war, was evangelical 
Christianity. It cannot be claimed that evangelical Chris- 
tianity discharged its full duty. Many evangelical Chris- 
tians have fallen short of this and have themselves been 
tested and found wanting. Evangelical Christianity has 
fallen short particularly in religious ministration since the 
war, which should have been its chief concern through 
these years. In the humanities, the evangelical churches 
of North America have in the main made good and stood 
the sifting without loss of prestige. There has been made 
such a convincing exhibition as was never before seen of 
religious charity. This has placed evangelical Christian- 
ity, and evangelical Christianity of North America in 
particular, in a position of honor and advantage which no 
other religion and no other section of Christianity enjoys. 

The tragedy of our shortcomings in pure missionary 
support and advance during these post-war days must be 
realized in the light of stern facts. If the churches had 
done as much for pure missions as they did for relief in 
proportion to the importance of the two and their respec- 
tive claims upon the churches, we would have such credit 
to our Christianity as would secure for Christ in many 
lands such tributes of praise from the throats of millions 
as angels have not heard in all the Christian centuries. 
Millions, who in the upheavals and overturnings of war 
discovered the falsehood and failure of other forms of re- 
ligion, discovered at the same time evangelical Christian- 
ity in its practical humanitarianism. High hopes were 


42 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


created among the disillusioned millions of Europe and 
other lands, that evangelical Christianity in North Amer- 
ica would as strongly and as expeditiously back its mis- 
sionary work and program in these lands as it had backed 
relief measures. 

The fog of religious illusion was blown away by the 
hurricane of war and winds of circumstance following 
the war. Men and women for the first time saw clearly 
the direction from which religious hope must come. Most 
of the hungry have been fed, or they are dead, though 
some are still with us, but there are millions of those dis- 
illusioned souls in many lands. Though bewildered at 
our missionary hesitation, they do still in their thirst for 
the Water of Life and hunger for the Bread of Life hold 
out their hands to us. With beseeching eyes they still 
look toward America for spiritual relief. Such an op- 
portunity evangelical Christianity has never faced. The 
great, immediate, urgent need of those who have lost faith 
in and respect for decadent and false religions is evangeli- 
cal Christianity as the only religious alternative. The 
props for religious faith which false religions supplied for 
millions have broken in the world cataclysm through 
which we have been passing. There is no help for these 
souls if evangelical Christianity does not supply it. If, 
however, evangelical Christianity is to meet this desperate 
need, it must go determinedly about its work without 
delay. These souls, broken, battered, disillusioned, dis- 
appointed, distressed, cannot in their exhaustion hold out 
and retain for us our opportunity if we hesitate. 

Moreover, something worse than the false faiths which 
have been abandoned will take the place of them shortly, 
if the alternative of evangelical Christianity is not pre- 
sented. In that case the last state of these souls will be 
worse than the first. There is no such urgent business be- 
fore the churches of Christ in America as this of hasten- 
ing to a disillusioned world with a gospel which can com- 
fort and sustain men. Nothing we have to do in America 
should at such a moment be allowed to stand in the way 


THE DISILLUSIONMENTS OF THE WORLD 43 


of this ministry to a world without hope. By the disillu- 
sionments of men God is at this very hour signaling to 
American Christians to proceed without delay to the re- 
ligious rescue of the world. If we leave for a decade 
these millions to their despair, many of them will go down 
to death without Christ and without hope, we will have 
lost our missionary opportunity, and the ranks of infidel- 
ity, agnosticism and skepticism will have been greatly in- 
creased. Already there is an army of skeptics and agnos- 
tics abroad in the world and largely of a class which, if 
won to evangelical Christianity, would be our strongest 
allies in the nations in which they live. There is a larger 
multitude of agnostics in the world than was ever num- 
bered before. 

A few years ago a religious census was taken of the 
students in the Imperial University of Tokyo, Japan, 
which disclosed some surprising and significant facts. 
There were found in this great Japanese institution, the 
head of the educational system of the Empire, more Chris- 
tians than Shintoists and Buddhists combined. A fact of 
even greater missionary significance is this: there were in 
the school 1,500 atheists, but there were 3,000 agnostics, 
that is to say, men who had lost faith in both Buddhism 
and Shintoism, but did not know a substitute. They did 
not deny the reality of all religion as did those in the insti- 
tution who reported themselves as atheists, but they 
doubted religion because they had outgrown the religion 
with which they were acquainted and had not been in- 
troduced to something better. Their minds were in sus- 
pense on the religious question. 

All the great universities of Continental Europe and of 
South America present conditions almost as alarming as 
does the Imperial University at Tokyo. At the same time 
they present marvelous opportunities for evangelical 
Christianity. Every man who has, during the past five or 
six years, touched the more intellectual classes in any 
Latin country of the world, where Roman Catholicism 
has for centuries held sway, will testify to the large num- 


Ad TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


ber of men and women in high social, commercial and 
political life who avow when approached that they no 
longer believe in the priests and in the formula of “the 
Church.” Christ and the Cross, as these are interpreted 
and proclaimed by evangelical Christianity, are the only 
sure, efficacious substitute for the Crescent and the Cruci- 
fix. 

Together with disillusionment, and consequent upon it, 
there is a bewilderment among many. Giving up false re- 
ligions, not through disrespect or disregard for true re- 
ligion, men find something wanting and do not know 
where to find it. They are not irreligious. Their reli- 
gious renouncements are not due to indifference to reli- 
gion, but to the fact that they have advanced in moral 
mind beyond the standards of religion about them, The 
place which religion was intended to fill in the lives of 
men is empty and leaves a poignant sense of religious 
need. They are enemies of the false only. They wait, 
search, long for the true. 

Christianity entered Europe under the direct call of 
God at a time, as President Coolidge has said, when “‘the 
pagan systems were breaking down, when civilization was 
falling into decadence and unspeakable corruption.” It 
was at such a time that God called his first missionaries 
to Europe. Since the armistice semi-heathenism and a 
pseudo-Christianity have been breaking down, and God 
again calls from Europe in her desperate plight, not to 
Asia, but to America, “Come over and help us.” 

The Missionary Review of the World for February, 


1925, says: 


“Multi-millionaires give of their accumulated wealth to 
establish universities, museums and libraries, and to provide 
funds for exploration and research. Meanwhile most of the 
churches and other organizations working for the spiritual 
as well as the material welfare of humanity at home and 
abroad are greatly hindered by lack of funds. 

“Almost all of the denominational mission boards, home 
and foreign, are struggling with deficits. For example, the 


THE DISILLUSIONMENTS OF THE WORLD 45 


Methodist Episcopal Church (North) diminished the gifts 
to foreign missions forty-one per cent. last year ($2,197,- 
510) as reported at the annual meeting of the Board held 
in Pittsburgh last November. As a result the Board has a 
debt of $3,100,000 (on which the interest alone cost $140,965 
last year) and has been obliged to reduce its appropriations 
from twenty-five to fifty per cent. 

“The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, also faces a 
serious debt of $1,216,159 in their foreign mission work, 
due to an uncollected balance of $15,000,000 on Centenary 
pledges. Instead of an increased income for an enlarged 
program there has been a decrease of receipts amounting to 
about $250,000 a year. 

“This decrease in giving reported from many sources is in 
spite of the fact that in the meantime savings bank deposits 
in the United States have increased by over one billion dol- 
lars and the invested wealth of our country has increased by 
twelve billion dollars.” 


These things show that opportunities have been lost, 
but opportunities remain. Both should stir the evangelical 
churches of America to a sense of their duty. The 
American Christian who cannot in these circumstances 
hear the call of God for a foreign mission advance has 
ears to hear and hears not. 


CHAPTER?) 
SIGN FOUR: THE UNIVERSAL OUTBREAK OF DEPRAVITY 


This includes the call of the homeland, of course, for 
sin and lawlessness are alarming here as everywhere. 
Ministers of God ought in private and in convocations to 
be importuning God for a new spiritual induement and 
evangelistic anointing and endowment. They ought as 
never before to make lost souls their quest on Sunday and 
weekdays, in byway and highway, among the down and 
out and the up and out. Crime and the defiance of law, 
sin and unregeneracy, are found among all classes. There 
is need that the Ten Commandments, as well as the 
gospel, shall have the attention of our pulpits. 

The time has come for evangelical Christian leaders at 
home to take invoice of the tremendous forces which they 
are ordained to lead in Kingdom establishment and ex- 
pansion. The task and responsibilities which now face 
the churches make it supremely necessary that they shall 
utilize their products and assets. What avails it, if 
churches go on multiplying members whom they do not 
use in the service of Christ? The religion of Jesus was 
never intended to set up a personal benefit society simply. 
No man or church is truly rich in Christ who is not en- 
riching the world with the output of his life and with 
the gospel of Christ. The disciples of Christ did not sim- 
ply reap the benefits of the new faith, they sowed it. 

The churches of America have as perhaps their 
biggest task and largest possible service to the home- 
land, the utilization of their own products, the re- 
generated men and women who compose their member- 
ship. What a force God has given evangelical Chris- 


tianity in America! What glorious results in home evan- 
46 


THE UNIVERSAL OUTBREAK OF DEPRAVITY 47 


gelization are certain if the church membership is really 
led to its great task! Impassioned, organized and di- 
rected for the one great work for which individuals are 
saved and churches are organized,—evangelization,—sin- 
ners at home can be reached. By utilizing the available 
evangelical forces already at our command as unofficial 
and volunteer workers, we can take care of the home sit- 
uation while releasing to the foreign mission work the 
comparatively small number whom God is calling to 
foreign fields, and money to equip them for efficient ser- 
vice. 

Let us take account of the strength of evangelical 
Christianity in America, remembering that our task is to 
utilize this strength for the Kingdom of Christ. To 
assist the memory we use in the following invoice the 
even numbers which are, however, in every case, a close 
approximation to the exact figures so far as these are 
known. The following figures may suggest something of 
the strength of our home base: 


Evangelical Churches in the United States.. 225,000 


SSrtIMeliat WLOTDET Sou: avn eae a are aha e Mk eulee 30,000,000 
DRITRN LA MLO EE AS, 51M aks Since dace voc k leeier kt 195,000 
Ua COO SGHOlATSY och clic s eee ak 18,000,000 
Bivaneeical, PTOACKETS yi vuln c es ceg view «aie e 200,000 
Sunday School Teachers and Officers ...... 1,500,000 


The above invoice does not by any means include all 
the potentialities of our American Christianity and or- 
ganization, nor some of the most effective of these agen- 
cies now in use and to be used with increasing effective- 
ness in the maintenance, strengthening and use of the 
home base. The women’s societies and young people’s 
organizations hold almost measureless possibilities for the 
Christianization of America and the discharge of Amer- 
ica’s international mission. But taking even the above 
figures, what an army and organization does this invoice 
show to be available for a more complete Christianiza- 
tion of the homeland and to meet the extraordinary for- 


48 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


eign mission call which God is sounding. These figures 
bear strong testimony to the goodness of God in his provi- 
dential care of our people and show that we are now in- 
deed ready for a great service in other lands. 

Take another class of organization and agencies. 
There are in the United States 689 colleges and universi- 
ties, 86 academies, and 187 theological seminaries and 
training schools under the control of the evangelical 
Christian denominations. Surely these should be de- 
pendable agencies not only for the faithful teaching of 
those things which lie at the heart of the evangelical mes- 
sage, and which are held by the denominations to which 
these schools look for support, but they should be the 
allies of the churches which brought them into existence 
in the work of Christ to which these churches are specifi- 
cally committed. 

There are more religious periodicals published by evan- 
gelical Christians in America than are published in all the 
rest of the world. 

These denominational agencies are in no small way sup- 
plemented by the elementary and high schools of the 
United States upon which was spent last year $1,800,- 
000,000, and which are supervised and taught almost alto- 
gether by Christians. Even though Christianity may not 
be taught in these public schools, there is no law against 
living the life of Christ in and out of the schools and be- 
fore the eyes of the classes. What an army for Christ in 
this land should these many thousands of Christian public 
school teachers be! There are also 32,881 instructors in 
the public and private colleges, universities and profes- 
sional schools of this country, the majority of the total 
number being professors of Christianity. What an op- 
portunity is given these teachers for Christian Americani- 
zation in the 618,555 students who sit in their classes five 
days in the week through successive years, 

In 1921 Dr. E. P. Alldredge in his “Southern Baptist 
Handbook” published some striking figures. At that 
time there were in the United States 7,198 hospitals and 


THE UNIVERSAL OUTBREAK OF DEPRAVITY 49 


1,761 allied institutions for the care of the sick and un- 
fortunate. The number has been increased since that 
time. <A little more than 500 of the above institutions 
only belong to Roman Catholics. 

There was in the hospitals alone 1 bed to every 160 
of our whole American population. There were in the 
allied institutions 21,113 additional beds. All of this 
equipment for the care of the sick in addition to the great 
army of doctors of all schools who are practicing outside 
of these hospitals! Many of the afflicted in China and 
Africa are two and three weeks from a doctor by such 
means of transportation as are available to them. It is a 
common sight in China to see a man bringing to a mission 
hospital his child or his wife in a wheelbarrow which he 
has pushed for days in his desperate struggle to save the 
life of his loved one. Can anyone contrast these home pro- 
visions for the prevention and cure of disease with con- 
ditions which confront every mission board in the world, 
and escape the overwhelming conviction that the time has 
come for us to shift immediately a great volume of our 
gifts and bequests to these lands across the seas where 
millions are out of reach of anyone who in the matter 
of training and skill is in a class with our American doc- 
tors, to say nothing of our hospitals and their modern 
equipment ? 

Suppose these immense forces should be utilized and 
they should carry Christ and his saving truth into the home 
and to the bedside as faithfully as our doctors administer 
medicine to the bodies of their patrons. No one will ques- 
tion that this Christian service is or should be paramount 
in the life of a Christian man. Mightily to strengthen 
our home work and to increase resources for foreign 
work, it is necessary that we shall vitalize and utilize these 
assets of our churches. 

To the program of teaching our young people, our 
women and our men, we must somehow institute a plan 
and program of practical volunteer service in soul win- 
ning among the great church membership in America. 


50 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


There is no greater challenge to the Christian leadership 
of America than this, to vitalize, organize, and utilize this 
church membership as a volunteer force for the first, the 
chief, the highest service, the very service a Christian is 
called to do—win sinners to the Saviour. 

Moreover, we must find some means and make our 
plans to utilize as we have not yet done the men and 
‘women of our churches as a volunteer army of conquest 
for Christ, or see Christianity in America drift more and 
more toward professionalism and doom our churches to 
mediocrity. If we are to have a vital, non-professional, 
spontaneous, and aggressive Christianity in this country 
for all the years which are ahead, we must insure it by 
directing to personal service those who have been per- 
sonally saved. 

Utilizing our home forces to strengthen and sustain the 
home base, there will flow an increasing and steady stream 
of Christian life, treasure and influence into the foreign 
fields which will make other lands as well as our own blos- 
som as the rose. Foreign mission boards will be able to 
send to the fields thousands of those who in the warmth 
of our home Christianity volunteer for service at the 
front, and these will carry the good tidings to the dark 
corners of the earth. We shall, too, support native work- 
ers in the foreign fields whose zeal and self-denial now 
challenge us, but who cannot without our help devote 
themselves to evangelism where opportunities are large and 
fresh every morning. 

Thoughtful men should pause and think upon such 
facts as the following: After all the providential years 
in which God has helped us get ready for this hour, with 
our great church membership, and a comprehensive or- 
ganization headed by 200,000 men whom God has or- 
dained to lead these hosts, and in the face of the extraor- 
dinary call of Foreign Missions at this hour, American 
Christians are spending upon themselves much the larger 
part of their benevolences. Last year, for instance, the 
evangelical churches of the United States spent $500,- 


THE UNIVERSAL OUTBREAK OF DEPRAVITY 51 


000,000 at home, where Christianity is so strong, while 
the 30,000,000 church members gave but $40,000,000 to 
Foreign Missions. We spent on ourselves $12.00 for 
every $1.00 we spent on the whole world in this urgent 
and extraordinary foreign mission hour! The Union 
Bulletin, a Jewish publication, says: 


“We have been able in the past eight years to collect 
within our own ranks $65,000,000 for rescue of the Jews of 
Eastern Europe and Palestine.” 


Think of that as a foreign mission effort by the Jews 
who, compared with evangelical Christians in America, 
are but as a company to a mighty regiment. 

The disproportion in gifts to home and foreign work iS 
increasing by leaps and bounds in this very period when 
Foreign Missions is the one great urgency appealing to 
our churches. Great as is the disproportion in the 
regular budget of the churches, it is far greater in the 
extra gifts and bequests which are being made by indi- 
viduals as supplements to these budgets. 

The following taken from the Baptist Courier tells a 
tale: 


“No age ever saw anything like this. No other country 
of the world can show anything comparable to it, though 
England comes next. 

“To what does this money go? What are the institutions 
that appeal to our American philanthropists ? 

“As we have said, $800,000,000.00 has gone to the en- 
dowment of educational institutions; for hospitals $300,- 
000,000.00; for ‘homes’ for young and old, $100,000,000.00 ; 
for scientific research, $300,000,000.00; to endowment for 
medical research, $40,000,000.00; for arts, books and music, 
$200,000,000.00. Mr. Hershey made his vast gift of $60,- 
000,000.00 for the education of poor orphan boys. We do 
not mention these gifts to education, science, and art for any 
purpose except to praise them. But we do not understand 
why theology is so generally overlooked.” 


52 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


The Boston Transcript gives Two Billion Five Hun- 
dred Million Dollars as the amount of American benevo- 
lence in 1924! And Foreign Missions but Forty Millions 
of that sum! 

If, when we have used our great organization and have 
utilized our abundant home forces for voluntary home 
evangelization, there still be some who neglect the call of 
God and resist his Spirit, then may the churches well shake 
off the dust from their feet and move on to those who never 
had a chance to accept the gospel of their salvation. Un- 
doubtedly Jesus meant something by the marching orders 
which he gave his disciples when he told them, “Whoso- 
ever will not receive you, when you go out of that city 
shake off the very dust from your feet for a testimony 
against them.” It is our duty to give every man a chance 
to be saved, and we should press the gospel invitation 
with much beseeching; but it is doubtful that we should 
wait in any place until everybody is saved while men and 
women in other places have never heard the story of sal- 
vation. Some men must be left to feel and bear responsi- 
bility for their own damnation, and it may become the 
minister’s duty to tell men this plain but solemn fact. 
The Apostles did not wait on everybody, and, if we do, 
many will never hear the call to repentance and faith. 
Within the life of the first believers and before any church 
had built for itself a house of worship, the gospel was 
preached in the wholé known world. There were indis- 
putable evidences that this was the will of God, and that 
it was done under the leadership of the Holy Spirit. Has 
God revised his program? Has the Holy Spirit adopted 
a different course? Do 225,000 evangelical churches of 
America now have the consent of the Spirit to go slow on 
Foreign Missions until every church has a “plant,” a 
parsonage, a pipe organ, is able to pay a choir, and every- 
thing round about is comfortable for the saints? There 
are thousands of churches in America which may very 
well institute an earnest inquiry as to whether they are not 
grieving the Holy Spirit by the disparity between the re- 


THE UNIVERSAL OUTBREAK OF DEPRAVITY 53 


ligious luxuries which they are providing for themselves 
and the amount which they are giving to send the first 
knowledge of the gospel to others. Is there any danger 
that some of our great churches are by the soothing com- 
forts which they are providing for themselves and the 
necessities which they are denying to others, doing de- 
spite to the Spirit of grace, cheating their own souls as well 
as God out of the richest joys which our religion yields ? 
The whole world lieth in sin. Is there no balm in 
Gilead? Jesus came expressly to call sinners to repen- 
tance and it is his will that all should come to repentance 
and live. If some will not repent, we dare not tarry, but 
should hasten until all have heard the call to repentance. 
Jesus went “into other cities” when some who heard him 
would not heed. There are thousands of cities in China 
where the call never breaks the silence of the dark night 
of heathenism. Some at home are “case hardened,” while 
millions abroad are yearning for a knowledge of God 
and are groping for the paths of truth. Many thousands 
in Europe and South America find priest and penance in- 
effectual. Shall they not be taught repentance and faith? 


CHAPTER VI 
SIGN FIVE: DIRECT WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 


Enough has been said to show that we recognize the 
fact that worldliness, sin, and lawlessness are marks of 
this generation, but these are not the only marks, thank 
God! They claim the headlines of the secular papers be- 
cause they are surface marks of society. They are red 
lines flaring in the midst of the world’s darkness, distress, 
want, and bewilderment. Superficial observers and report- 
ers see these, but do not always have vision for facts 
which are far more significant and which are plain for 
those who look a little deeper into human life and a little 
further into the darkness which envelops it. 

1. The Spirit of God is at work on foreign mission 
fields. He is at work in South America, Europe, Japan 
and China, in India, even in the lands of Islam and in the 
shadowed recesses where African tribes bow down to “an 
image made like to corruptible man and to birds and four- 
footed beasts and creeping things.” On all the fields of 
the world it is found that the Spirit of God is making 
preparation of these fields for his missionaries. Every- 
where harvests are ripe and ripening every hour. Some 
adverse gales blow across the fields and threaten much 
loss of precious grain, but nobody can successfully chal- 
lenge the statement that there was never an hour when 
the world was so inclined to hear the gospel and so con- 
scious of its need of the help which the gospel alone can 
bring as now. Says Dr. Cornelius H. Patton in his book, 
“The Business of Missions” (speaking of Africans) : 


“To-day so many tribes and nations are being swept to- 
ward the church that Pentecost appears to them to have 
come to earth again. They have little difficulty in under- 
standing what is described in the second chapter of Acts.” 

54 


DIRECT WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 55 


Again he says: 

“But one need not keep up with the figures in order to 
realize that, as an old native Christian expressed it, ‘A new 
tribe has come into Africa in our day, the Tribe of God.’ 
As for the missionaries they are working in a state of quiet 
elation. Said one of their number, Jean Mackenzie, the 
well known writer, ‘Think of the sensation of laboring for 
the Kingdom through many weary years, with meager re- 
sults, and then one day looking up and seeing the Kingdom 
coming down the road!” 


No one but the Holy Spirit can prepare national soil 
for the truth and the soul for the Saviour. On every hand 
there are evidences that God’s Spirit has gone before and 
still leads on, or would lead on, where abundant harvests 
wait. Fields many and vast are white and much will be 
lost if the reapers tarry. This is the work of the Spirit. 
He recognizes the advantage of world conditions and 
is at work. Never were men and women on mission fields 
so easily brought to Christ and to public confession of sin 
and the Saviour as to-day. This is not true of any one 
field in particular, though some fields are bending with 
a ripeness which others may not yet have reached. The 
writer, who never goes to a mission field without a prayer 
and a purpose that he may combine soul winning with 
missionary administration, has, though stammering the 
Message of Life through interpreters in China, in South 
America, the Balkan Republics and elsewhere, had the 
joy of seeing men, women and children come to God in 
companies of tens and twenties and upwards. It is easier 
to hold an evangelistic service in Brazil, in China, or 
Roumania, than in America. We have seen people make 
profession of faith in Christ won by the truth contained 
in the first sermon they ever heard. We have seen nu- 
merous other individuals who were converted before they 
had ever heard a sermon; the Spirit of God had used a 
copy of the New Testament or a small religious tract to 
bring light and life into these lives. The hearts of mil- 
lions seem to be aching for the Good News. Many preach- 


56 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


ers at home are compelled to advertise and to stump their 
communities for audiences, tease and ding-dong men who 
are gospel hardened. Missionaries cannot buy, build, nor 
rent halls to hold the multitudes which would hear the gos- 
pel gladly. 

Is there not a lesson in such facts for preachers of the 
gospel? Should not our people at home be told these 
thrilling facts? Is it not a tragedy that a congregation 
which is struggling with the case-hardened sinners of the 
community should not know that there are men and 
women in multitudes, yes, millions, to whom the gospel 
is still Good News, and who receive the Truth gladly 
when it is preached to them? A pulpit in America which 
is silent on missions is aloof from the ways of God in 
this generation. There is no literature among the be- 
wildering volumes which pour from our printing presses 
that has for the preacher more power or inspiration, or 
will more help him keep his people in line of march with 
Christ through his and their generation than the mis- 
sionary books which are appearing in increasing nnmbers 
and which discuss the things which attend the Spirit’s 
going in all quarters of the globe. 

What would have been the consequences for the world 
and to Christianity itself had the Christians of the first 
century not been missionary? What would have been 
the consequences to all future generations if the first gen- 
eration of preachers had been indifferent to the mission- 
ary literature of their generation? Most preachers to-day 
are readers of books. It is only a question of what they 
read. The apostles were interested in missionary litera- 
ture. There were great authors in the first Christian cen- 
tury but the Christians paid as little attention to them as 
those writers did to the Christians. There were Livy, 
the two Plinys, Ovid, Philo, Seneca, Josephus and Plu- 
tarch, The New Testament does not mention them! 
They were great men and wrote great books, but it is not 
their books, with all the help of the schools, that consti- 
tute the household literature of the world to-day. That 


DIRECT WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 57 


place of honor belongs to the missionary literature which 
was produced in that first century. The Christians of that 
century had good taste. The very existence of the New 
Testament is evidence of the zest of the first preachers of 
the gospel for the missionary literature of their age. The 
New Testament is not only missionary in its instruction 
but was written afield and is full of missionary incidents. 
It cannot be correctly interpreted by any man who does 
not see it against the missionary background out of which 
it issued and of which it tells the story. That literature 
which the Spirit of God inspired is a missionary litera- 
ture preéminently. The books which the early Christians 
most read and were most zealous to preserve for suc- 
ceeding generations are missionary books. For a man to 
preach sermon after sermon on one subject and another, 
taking his text from the Bible, with never a reference to 
missions, not to say with missions as the dominant note, 
is to deal unfairly with the Book. 

The preacher’s library, the books he reads and the ser- 
mons which grow out of his reading and his study, reveal 
much of his likeness or unlikeness to the Christian 
preacher of the first century. That pulpit, which seeks 
to get men and women to go the way God is going, and 
to have the companionship of Christ and the presence and 
power of the Holy Spirit for his ministry and in the lives 
of his people, had better make sure of right relation to 
the missionary enterprise of his generation. The Spirit of 
God is abroad in the world in quest of souls and in making 
paths for missionaries to the hearts of the nations. Can 
the reader name one spiritual preacher who is not pas- 
sionately missionary? Will Christ’s ministers follow him 
in their reading and in their leading? 

2. The Holy Spirit is not less manifestly at work in 
the lives of many of those in mission lands who have been 
saved. They show the proof of the work of the Spirit and 
of his abiding presence. Such devotion to Christ and 
such zeal in evangelization, such self-denial and sacrifices 
for Christ and his cause, as we have seen in lands across 


58 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


the seas where duty has called us! Many sons and daugh- 
ters of God suffer the loss of all things for the excellency 
of the knowledge of Christ, including in this loss even 
love of mothers and fathers, the benefits of family and 
fortune, that they may make converts to a faith which they 
have found precious. Out of the most pitiful and meager 
incomes some are providing their own churches with 
houses of worship; many are devoting themselves to evan- 
gelism without compensation, though the little businesses 
upon which their families depend for bread must be neg- 
lected. Some Japanese Christians have during the past 
six years been giving up one meal a day to have part in 
what they have understood to be the sacrifices of their 
American brethren for Foreign Missions. We have 
found a shoemaker in Bucharest, out of his small earnings 
at the bench, paying the rent of a gospel hall where Sun- 
day by Sunday he can be found with a radiant face wel- 
coming the soul-hungry men and women who seek this 
hall as a refuge from their religious plight and in hope 
of finding Christ there. 

Let the per capita gifts of the men and women in our 
mission churches, many of them poor beyond our ability 
to realize their poverty, speak for the work of the Spirit 
of God in the lives of foreign mission converts. How the 
liberality of some of these, the Lord’s poor, and only re- 
cently brought into the light and liberty of the children 
of God, rebukes many church members at home, and 
makes a scandal of their luxuries and extravagances in- 
dulged at the expense of Foreign Missions! 

3. But again the Spirit of God signals forward to his 
hesitating people in the self-giving of unprecedented num- 
bers of young people at home offering themselves to for- 
eign mission service. And here we come upon the glory 
and tragedy of our home Christianity. In the midst of the 
deplorable ungodliness, pleasure-loving, and much un- 
seemliness which tries the soul of sober-minded saints and 
true friends of the young, there is nevertheless a new 
thing taking place in the young life of our churches and 


DIRECT WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 59 


our schools. In contrast with the giddiness, worldliness, 
the unconventionalities, and frivolities, young men and 
women in numbers larger than were ever known before 
have these recent years been offering themselves to mis- 
sion boards to carry his Truth to other lands. Truly these 
young people are the best spiritual products of our Ameri- 
can Christianity. 

Can the American churches utilize their own product? 
The mission board with which this writer is associated 
has listed a thousand names of these volunteers who, be- 
yond high school and in college, university or seminary, 
or having passed through them, have declared themselves 
for foreign mission service. What a crown of glory for 
our Christian homes, churches and schools which have 
nurtured these young men and women! What a precious 
offer is this which the Spirit of God is making to the 
churches of America to extend their influence, multiply 
their numbers in other lands, and to adorn the brow of 
Christ! What a blessing to a lost world would these 
young lives be if the churches would accept their responsi- 
bility to send them hence with the Good Tidings of Great 
Joy to those who sit in the shadow of death! 

And yet, a large number of young people who have 
already finished their training at much personal sacrifice 
are now waiting on the churches while the harvest fields 
in their ripeness are calling for them. At the close of an 
address in a Southwestern state recently, the Dean of one 
of our universities said to the audience, pointing to this 
writer, ““There is the man who, when I offered myself to 
-foreign mission service, slapped me in the face and closed 
the doors against my ambition for my life.’ We were 
compelled to admit the charge, but we added, ‘‘We have 
this year been compelled to slap in the face nearly a hun- 
dred other applicants by saying to them, as the churches 
forced us to say to you, ‘There is no money with which 
to send you.’ ” 

Could there be a greater tragedy in our churches than 
this, that we must deny to the ripest products of our 


60 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


home Christianity, the most devoted young people whom 
we can produce, the opportunity to use their consecrated 
lives on fields to which God has called them, and in which 
the Spirit is preparing harvests for their successful gar- 
nering? Shall we continue to throw wet blankets upon 
such youthful consecration? There is no finer tribute to 
our Christian schools and no stronger justification for the 
support which has been given them and which they ask 
of the churches than these young people who, coming 
from their classrooms, are offering their lives to mission 
boards for service in the dark lands where Christ’s simple, 
saving gospel is not known. And yet the question will not 
down, Can we justify maintaining the plants if we can- 
not use their products? Let the cold, harsh fact be faced 
that we are denying appointment to these applicants, and 
we are doing it notwithstanding exceptional prosperity in 
our land and in our churches, and while multitudes of men 
and women in our churches are indulging in luxuries and 
extravagances. Can we hope long to have rich manifes- 
tations of the Spirit of God in our home churches and 
schools when we decline to codperate with the Holy Spirit 
in such leading on behalf of Foreign Missions? 

Granting that the Christians in our churches really wish 
to use these products of our home Christianity and enable 
these young people to invest their lives for Christ on the 
foreign mission fields, can they do it? It is not conceiv- 
able that the Spirit of God would prepare the nation for 
missionaries and then call young men and young women 
to go to these fields, and at the same time leave his people 
unable to send them. “How can they preach except they 
be sent?” Their call to missionary service is precisely at 
the time when our American churches are able to send 
them. Our standards of living, our comforts, the pleasure 
and luxuries in which we indulge, even the millions which 
some are giving to philanthropic objects—all testify that 
we could, if we would, furnish the comparatively little 
money that is needed to support the missionaries and equip 
all the fields. 


DIRECT WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 61 


Some time ago a godly mission worker in one of our 
Southern cities proposed to a company of Christian men 
and women who were engaged with him in a mission Sun- 
day School, that they organize that mission into a church. 
There was prompt challenge of the propriety of such a 
suggestion. The men spoke almost in one voice, “If we 
organize a church we will be expected to assume self- 
support and we are not able to do it.” To this the mis- 
sion worker made answer, “If nine of you will each give 
the tenth of your income, I will be the tenth man to give 
the tithe and become your pastor and I will live as com- 
fortably as the average man of you.”’ That was a chal- 
lenge which they dared not parry. They accepted the 
proposal. Result: Soon that pastor was getting $2,400 a 
year, a new lot had been purchased, a new house was 
built and entered, all church expenses were met monthly, 
and missionary contributions were flowing regularly in 
surprising volume into the missionary treasury of that 
church and of its denomination. Such simple and prac- 
tical methods adopted by the churches of America would 
supply all the money that is really needed for any object at 
home or abroad, and Christianity here and across the 
seas would flourish like a green bay-tree; for God’s Spirit 
ministers overflowing blessing to those who give up to the 
measure of God’s requirement. “Bring ye all the tithes 
into the storehouse that there may be meat in my house, 
and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of Hosts, if 
I will not open you the windows of heaven and pour you 
out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to re- 
ceive it” (Mal. 3:10). The church which adopts a whole 
Bible, including the Bible’s plain teaching upon money and 
missions, always realizes the flush of a new life and en- 
joys a new reign of grace in its members. 

4. But this work of the Spirit of God among the young 
people is not confined to the young people in our Ameri- 
can churches. Churches which have been brought into 
existence on foreign mission fields, and by foreign mission 
effort, usually give evidence of a warm tide of spiritual 


62 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


and missionary life running through their members. In 
proportion to numbers, the young people in our foreign 
churches are equal to those in our home churches, offer- 
ing themselves for Christian work and seeking prepara- _ 
tion for it. It should not be necessary to tell the reader 
that there are no opportunities for these young people to 
prepare themselves for Christian service except as the mis- 
sion boards provide or help to provide them. The non- 
mission schools on mission fields afford no incentive and 
provide no distinctive training for missionary service. 
The mission boards must provide training for those on 
the mission fields whom God calls to this holy vocation of 
preaching his gospel, or these must remain untrained and 
the larger measure of their influence be lost to the fields 
which call for their services. The efforts and disappoint- 
ments, the implorings and discouragements of some of 
these young people on the foreign fields whose hearts 
God’s Spirit has touched are pathetic experiences in mis- 
sionary administration. Let me recite an instance. 

Here is a young man in Chile, his father a man of 
means and his family one of the best in that country. He 
was sent to the University of Chile for a course in law. 
By providential contacts with missionaries the young man 
found Christ, and with him a new life ambition. We 
found him in Santiago, and in visits to the University of 
Chile, were much impressed by the high favor he enjoyed 
with students and professors. But we found him in dis- 
tress. Finding Christ, he had gone home to his father, 
and broken to him the news of his conversion. The 
father was stern and wrathful. The son pleaded, 
“Father, I do not love you less because I have learned to 
love Christ. I do not purpose to be a less dutiful son, but 
I hope to give you occasion for greater joy and pride in 
me because of what Christ has done for me.” But the 
father was unrelenting and the son was denied his part 
in the family estate and turned away from the parental 
door. His love and devotion for Christ was unabated. 
This young man has put up to one of our missionaries, 


DIRECT WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 63 


who in turn has put up to us, the question of whether he 
shall quit his law course in the University and begin 
preparation for the ministry of the gospel of Christ. He 
has family tradition behind him. He has personality, 
talent and culture. He has evangelistic passion, and 
would be a great asset to the cause of Christ in Chile. 
No doubt, he would call many other young men out of his 
social rank to adorn the churches of Christ and the min- 
istry of the Word. But, alas, depleted resources of our 
board makes it impossible for us to hold out a helping 
hand to this young man and secure for him the oppor- 
tunity to make the preparation which he covets. This case 
is but an illustration of many with which this and other 
boards are dealing, and which pierce like arrows the hearts 
of those who deal with them. 

Are not these young people at home and abroad, who 
tell us that they have lifted up their eyes and looked upon 
the fields, and that they have heard the inner voice and 
cannot of their choice disregard it, the Spirit’s signals to 
make plain to the churches the way which God is going 
and would have his churches go? Have our pastors 
failed to discern and interpret to the churches these signs 
of the times? Have we, brother ministers, been so in- 
tent upon preparing our sermons and polishing discourses, 
that it has seemed to us below the homiletic art to talk to 
our congregations about God’s doings in our day and 
hour? Have we, in our ambition to be finished and fine 
preachers, thought it a pulpit impropriety to come down 
to the level of the young lives in which God is working? 
Have we, seeing these signs, striven with might and main 
to make all God’s people see what he is about and the 
thing in which he seeks to engage us? To get a church 
in line with God’s will is the highway to church building 
and to full realization of the very things after which our 
pastors are yearning. Citation of God in the lives of mul- 
titudes of young people is worth more than all our rhetoric 
and elegance, of literary reference and classic quotation, 
as a remedy for indifference, for worldliness and covetous- 


64 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


ness. Those who would ascend the heights and carry 
their people with them must go with Christ after the lost, 
and nothing will more certainly create the desire and pur- 
pose to do this than the knowledge that large numbers of 
young people have in these pleasure-loving times turned 
away from all worldly allurements to find the fulfillment 
of their lives in Christian service. 

These pages are intended above all things to be an ap- 
peal to the leaders of God’s people that, with a new faith- 
fulness, they shall point out to Christian men and women 
of America the signs of the times. These are the signals 
of God for his people and mark that which constitutes the 
chief urgency in our Christian work and life to-day. 
God’s plan for his churches and his purposes for a lost 
world cannot be fulfilled if God’s leaders of his people are 
not watchful, valiant, faithful in their effort to align 
their congregations with him in that which most deeply 
concerns him, Asked the other day, ““What is the greatest 
need of Foreign Missions?’ we answered “Missionary 
churches at home.” 

5. The success which is attending Foreign Missions 
in this hour is another significant sign which indicates the 
will of God for his churches. The American churches 
have denied the foreign mission enterprise the money 
which is necessary for equipment on the mission fields, 
and many missionaries have had their usefulness greatly 
limited by this failure. The churches have failed to send 
out scores of young men and women who have applied 
for appointment, and in this have discouraged these young 
people and others who were preparing for foreign service. 
Already the effect of our failure to appoint those who 
have made application for appointment to foreign mis- 
sion fields is seen upon those in our colleges and semi- 
naries who were preparing to offer themselves when their 
courses were finished. The last twelve months have given 
evidence of distressing decline of missionary interest 
among theological students. Those who graduated a 
year ago could not be appointed and their disappointment 


DIRECT WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 65 


was known to those in the seminaries whom they had left 
so recently, and with the natural consequence that the 
missionary fires have begun to burn low in these institu- 
tions. Somebody will have to carry the responsibility for 
this. 

Nevertheless, failing as we have failed, from every land 
come tidings of success and promise of larger results with 
larger efforts. Pages could be filled with the reports of 
converts on all the fields of all mission boards. An educa- 
tional missionary at Fukuoka, Japan, writes, 


“Since January Ist I have baptized forty into the fellow- 
ship of our church here in the school. Most of them were 
from the students. Over eighty of our boys have professed 
faith in Jesus Christ and many have joined other churches.” 


Another school man from China writes, 


“We have just closed an eight day meeting in the school. 
The girls’ school also attended. One hundred boys and fifty 
girls decided to follow Christ.” 


What would Robert Morrison say? Surely his ran- 
somed soul would be filled with rapture at tidings like 
these. Seven years he toiled before he made his first con- 
vert, and for twenty-eight years of as faithful and sacri- 
ficial service perhaps as was ever given to China, he could 
name but five more. His total ingathering after thirty- 
four years was six. Carey labored and agonized in prayer 
for seven years, and when, with the assistance of others, 
at the end of this period of sewice, he had the privilege 
of baptizing one convert, the scene was almost too much 
for his fellow-missionary to endure in the flesh. His joy 
was so great that he was beside himself in hilariousness. 
For fifty years American Baptists have been represented 
in mission work in Europe. In the last six years there 
have been baptized on their mission fields in Europe 
twenty times as many converts as their missionaries had 
baptized in the previous fifty years. The total member- 
ship of the Baptist churches in France after fifty years of 


66 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


missionary work is not quite equal to the number of con- 
verts baptized in Roumania last year. This is not due to 
greater faithfulness in the one country than the other. 
We make no comparisons there. It is due to the fact that 
the war has made a new world for Foreign Missions. 
There has been in Poland a rate of increase similar to that 
in Roumania. A most gratifying change has come over 
all the fields of Europe. Other mission boards could make 
similar reports and of many lands. In one year, 1922-23, 
one mission board had reported to it more additions to its 
churches in Japan than the total membership of these 
churches when the war began, although that board had 
been at work in Japan since 1890. 

Do these facts not signify something for our American 
churches concerning Foreign Missions? Is not the Spirit 
of God trying to reveal to us the will of God? Can we 
not see in signs like these a summons of the American 
churches to a forward movement in Foreign Missions? 
That there should be actual retrenchment before these signs 
and marvels of the Spirit is alarming. To whose doors 
will be laid the sin of ignoring the divine leading, of doing 
despite the Spirit of the Lord in his work among the 
young people at home and sinners on the field and of de- 
spising doors of opportunity everywhere? To whom will 
he say, “Oh, ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the 
sky, but ye cannot discern the signs of the times”? 

We could quote from the correspondence of mis- 
sionaries with mission boards, pages which tell of unmet 
need and inadequate force and equipment to take up 
great and alluring opportunities, of plaintive appeals, sore 
discouragements, and complaints sometimes, though not 
often. But if we should do this, and tell half the truth, 
this volume would be swollen to a size which would balk 
the cold and casual student of missions, and would seem 
to him an effort to shift to others the burden which mis- 
sion boards and mission secretaries should carry. Mean- 
while these missionaries, far away from home, must en- 
dure silently and without the concern of masses of Chris- 


DIRECT WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 67 


tians in our home churches until God’s leaders break the 
hearts of the indifferent with the facts about Foreign 
Missions in this marvelous day of the Lord. 

Surely it is possible to present to any meeting of Chris- 
tian people things concerning the foreign fields, Chris- 
tian education, for instance, quite as interesting as any- 
thing we can say concerning this great department of our 
work at home. Would not an American audience be as 
interested in some observations upon a college and theo- 
logical seminary in Rio de Janeiro with 700 students, or a 
hospital in Wuchow, China, which treated nearly 35,000 
patients last year, as it would be in a similar institution 
at home? If information and discussion of the home in- 
stitution are necessary, and we know as well as anybody 
that they are, are they not necessary in the case of insti- 
tutions on the foreign fields, if our people are to have that 
knowledge concerning these which will evoke sympathy 
and support for them? 

Why is it that the papers are reporting $15,000,000 
given by one man to a single institution in Rochester, 
N. Y.; of approximately $40,000,000 to a single educa- 
tional institution in North Carolina; of $60,000,000 given 
by one man to start and equip another educational institu- 
tion in Pennsylvania which has already many similar in- 
stitutions? Why have no such gifts ever been devoted 
by anybody to Foreign Missions which includes educa- 
tion, publication, evangelization, hospitals, orphanages, 
and everything else that we are doing at home? A foreign 
mission board’s work does not include one college but 
many, one publishing house but several, one hospital but 
usually a large number of them. The vaster need of edu- 
cation on the foreign field, of orphanages, and other of 
these institutions with which our home work has made us 
familiar should be apparent to anyone who stops to think. 
Multitudes in pagan or papal lands are without the rudi- 
ments of education ; many of the sick are beyond the reach 
of a doctor; orphans are not there, as here, surrounded 
by Christian homes and Christian compassion. And yet 


68 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


the fortunes, the big bequests, the great endowments, go 
to the departments of the home task, and none of them 
even to Foreign Missions classed, as it so frequently is, 
as one department only. Think of single individual gifts 
to single institutions which are larger than all the gifts 
of all the evangelical Christians to Foreign Missions ina 
whole twelve months! We rejoice and will rejoice in 
every benefaction to our beloved homeland which is ours 
as truly as it is any man’s. We bless God for every gift 
which enriches this land in Christ. But we cannot get 
away from the cry which comes from Macedonia, and we 
covet big gifts for this larger, more importunate call. 

If the leaders of the denominations desire, and no one 
questions that they do desire, to enlarge the intelligence, 
the sympathy, and increase the prayers and benevolences 
of the churches for this vast work, they will find a way 
to do it. It must first be recognized that whatever is 
necessary to a normal and efficient Christianity at home is 
necessary to a normal and efficient Christianity on the 
foreign fields. Therefore, whatever institutions we must 
maintain here to produce this sort of Christianity, we 
must create and maintain on the foreign fields to produce 
the same thing. For instance, we cannot exhort those to 
“search the Scriptures” who cannot read; and more than 
half the people in papal and pagan lands cannot read. 

A great practical step toward producing intelligence and 
securing sympathy and support for Foreign Missions, 
known as a single enterprise, but including all Christian 
enterprises, is to apply these facts to the programs of 
meetings where essential enterprises of Christ's Kingdom 
are to have consideration, and in which they ought to have 
something like proportionate consideration. 

Then, too, a fairer appraisement of Foreign Missions 
will be secured if those who sit in board and committee 
meetings, appointed to handle executive matters for the 
churches, will, when they are being impressed with the 
needs of some enterprise or institution at home, try to 
visualize the needs of a similar institution or enterprise 


DIRECT WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 69 


on the foreign fields, and then consider that this class of 
institution is multiplied many times on the vast and needy 
fields where foreign mission operations are being carried 
on. Our home people have enough money to take care 
of all our present work at home and abroad, but we must 
give them information, and they must distribute their 
gifts with impartiality according to need, urgency and op- 
portunity. Of course, the institutions to which this 
money is applied, at home and abroad, should be admin- 
istered with equal and faithful economy. If we plan 
porcelain baths for our schools in one land, and barracks 
for those in another, we shall, naturally, find the needs of 
the first greater than the needs of the latter. A good 
degree of the simple life is good for any student whether 
in a school in America or one on any foreign field. Man- 
hood is not often promoted by luxuries. 

6. The gracious work of the Spirit in the hearts of 
men on the mission fields is a more certain sign to the 
churches because it 1s not confined to any field. The 
Spirit seems at work in the midst of and in advance of 
missionaries in every land of the world. God is not calling 
us to one country only but to all. There is not a mission 
field of our acquaintance which does not present unprece- 
dented opportunities for soul-winning at this time if only 
the missionary forces could be increased and workers on 
the fields could be given ampler facilities for their work. 
South America is ripe for the gospel harvester. China’s 
call is not only the call of millions who are unsaved, but 
of millions who are ready to hear the gospel which alone 
can meet China’s needs. Dr. Zwemer and Dr. Mott tell 
us that Islam presents a missionary opportunity of which 
even these missionary optimists had not dreamed a few 
years ago. It is common talk that India is an embarrass- 
ment to the limited number of workers there so responsive 
are the multitudes to gospel invitation. For anyone to miss 
God’s signal to his churches in such facts as these which 
characterize all the fields is to invalidate all claim to spir- 
itual leadership. 


CHAPTER VII 
SIGN SIX: THE NEW OPPORTUNITY IN EUROPE 


This is one of the most remarkable signs of the times. 
For the first time in many centuries the white races of the 
world present to evangelical Christianity a truly great mis- 
sionary opportunity. It is a fact so new, so commanding, 
and so significant, that thoughtful men should ponder 
it with great seriousness. The war wrought changes no- 
where so great as in Europe. The religious changes have 
been largely in favor of evangelical Christianity. For 
centuries the channels of evangelical Christianity in Eu- 
rope were clogged, miasmas of superstition stifled the 
low lands of illiteracy to which the masses were doomed 
by ecclesiasticism, and a chilling rationalism issued from 
university halls. At last the breath of God is blowing over 
hill and plain, and the clear air of evangelicalism and the 
warm spirit of evangelism are stirring everywhere. We 
have now our opportunity to win the white races of Eu- 
rope and of the world, and this is a missionary fact and a 
call which should not be despised. 

We pause just here to say with the strongest possible 
emphasis, that in discussing the white race we do not 
mean to undervalue any other race, nor to suggest that 
mission work among the colored races should be slowed 
down while we turn now for the first time in the history 
of America to a great mission work among the white races 
of Europe. Every race has its distinctive merits, its mis- 
sion, and its own destiny to work out. There can be no 
fulfillment of God’s plans if any race misses its place in 
the divine program. As regards gospel privilege and a 
share in the overflowing love of God, there is no distinc- 
tion between white and ee yellow and brown. The 

0 


THE NEW OPPORTUNITY IN EUROPE 71 


heart of the true missionary and the true missionary 
church is as warm for one race as for another. More- 
over, we would not so much as by a word incite white 
men to a haughty pride, super-sensitiveness and a hyper- 
self-consciousness which are disgusting exhibitions for 
any man or race to make. The man who indulges these 
weaknesses thinks more of the liberties which belong to 
him than of the responsibilities which God imposes. The 
fact upon which we are dwelling should impart a sober 
sense of the white man’s responsibility rather than feed 
his vanity. He has to a degree that no other race has a 
mission to the world. He is endowed and commissioned 
to be God’s missionary to his own race and to all races. 
The peculiar place of the white man in the Lord’s pro- 
gram is indeed one of exceptional responsibility for other 
races while working out the destiny of his own. Other 
races have racial duties in equal measure with the white 
man, but the white man has racial duty and, above any 
colored race, interracial responsibilities. The abilities and 
responsibilities of all black and yellow and brown races 
are more or less limited to these races respectively. Not 
so with the white man. His is a mission to all the world 
and every creature. We do not know a more sobering 
thought than this. Moreover, if there is with any Chris- 
tian of the white race a temptation to vanity and vain- 
glorying in the fact of being a white man, that weakness 
will be subdued when once the responsibility of the white 
man is fully realized. 

This endowment for world service is not confined to 
the Anglo-Saxon branch of the white race. God’s pur- 
pose may center in the English-speaking nations, the 
people who more than any other are the present custodians 
of the evangelical Christian faith; but his purpose includes 
the white Latin, the white Teuton, that is to say, the 
Caucasian or universal white race. And his missionary 
purpose for the race contemplates a large use of white men. 
National boundaries are artificial, language itself is super- 
ficial, nature is official. God has endowed the white man 


72 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


by nature with ability to universalize his ideas and ideals 
as he has not endowed any other people in the world. 
The history of the human race is proof of this. Not 
speech but color covers the soul, There are varying men- 
tal and soul characteristics underneath the color of the 
national skin. The racial instinct and quality are of much 
greater desideratum than language or residence. It is the 
soul of the white man, his aptitude and impulses, his pro- 
pensities, and his capacity to communicate his ideas, his 
instinct for colonization, his adventurous spirit, his ini- 
tiative and leadership in matters of civilization, which de- 
termine God’s place for him in the missionary program 
for the world. This temper of soul is bred in the white 
man, and is not bred in any colored race. These things 
constitute the endowments of the Creator and indicate 
God’s purpose for the white race. Each race in its place, 
working out its destiny and fulfilling God’s purpose for 
it, is in the eyes of God equally precious and equally hon- 
orable, whatever the color of the skin. 

The white man’s work for the colored races at home 
and abroad ought to be carried forward with stronger 
purpose, more intelligence, and greater devotion. It is a 
mark of what Christianity can do for a people that, until 
the close of the war in 1918, the bulk of the white man’s 
foreign mission money was given to evangelize colored 
races. ‘lhe grace of God breaks down racial prejudice 
and awakens interracial sympathy and solicitude. We cal- 
culate that of the foreign mission money given during 
the past one hundred years up to the close of the war by 
the white churches of America, probably ninety-nine per 
cent. was contributed to the evangelization, the education, 
the healing and help of colored races. Christ so tri- 
umphed over racial prejudice, and will so triumph more 
and more if white men and black and brown are yielded 
to him. 

But we are speaking of the new opportunity for win- 
ning the white races of Europe in particular and of the 
new and great responsibility which this fact lays upon 


\ 


THE NEW OPPORTUNITY IN EUROPE 73 


the churches of America. Europe needs the gospel, needs 
it desperately, and great multitudes recognize their needs, 
and are calling for it. America, on the other hand, has, 
by the bounties of God bestowed upon our churches, 
ability and responsibility for a large part in the financing 
of the Kingdom of God in many parts of Europe and 
South America. Compared with other lands our land is 
a land of plenty. Our resources are incalculable. Our 
land is free from famine, plague and pestilence; the soil 
yields its regular harvests, and the earth is full of essen- 
tial wealth. Our banks are bulging with the deposits of 
millions to the credit of our fellow-citizens. It is at such 
an hour that the call comes again from Europe to “come 
over and help us.” 

When God turned the Apostle Paul from Asia, doing 
so by manifest and remarkable interpositions of the Spirit 
of Christ, it was for a reason. Think, if you will, what 
might have been the effect upon the beginnings of Chris- 
tianity if Paul had carried out his own desires and had 
not been turned away from Asia and Bithynia to Europe. 
It is true that political and ecclesiastical diplomacy later 
captured the churches and corrupted and used many of 
them for unholy purposes. Nevertheless, the value of white 
races to Roman Catholicism illustrates the value of the 
white race to any cause which men would universalize. 
Where would Rome be to-day without the work of mis- 
sionaries whom the Pope has found in Italy, in France, in 
Ireland, in Spain, in Portugal? The Roman Catholic in- 
stitution is a world force to-day because of the use which 
its head has made of white men. It is folly for evangelical 
Christians to think that the gospel can ever be universalized 
without the white race and without a much larger constit- 
uency of white men than have yet been won to evangelical 
Christianity. The white nations of the world constitute 
an important part of the foreign mission field if the hu- 
man race is considered only as an object of missions; but 
the conversion of the white nations becomes a matter of 
indispensable importance to the missionary program when 


74 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


we reflect that the interracial missionaries of the world 
have been white men. It is a task as sacred and as bind- 
ing as duty can be to save any man. It is an achievement 
which has probabilities of multiplying itself when we win 
a white man to Christ. We serve all nations when we 
save them. We win possible missionaries to other races 
when we win men of the white race. If won to Christ, 
their missionary spirit will overflow in missionary en- 
deavor to the enrichment of all peoples. It was of a white 
church that the Apostle wrote: “From you sounded out 
the Word of the Lord not only in Macedonia and Achaia, 
but also in every place your faith to Godward is spread 
abroad” (1 Thess. 1:8). 

For a Christian white man to plead exemption from 
missions with the hackneyed words, “Charity begins at 
home” is not only to exhibit pusillanimity, but it is in con- 
tradiction of the effects of Christianity upon a white 
man’s soul. That is more appropriately a colored man’s 
view of Christian duty and Christian responsibility than 
a white man’s; for by nature’s endowments the colored 
man’s mission is mainly to his own race and homeland, 
while God has called white men to a world mission as well 
as to home missions. _ Moreover, all men grow to the 
measure of their ideals, aims and efforts. If white men 
hope to grow largeness of spirit, depth and height and 
breadth of Christian character, they must open the doors 
of their souls to the call of God and to the needs of all 
men. A serious and weighty part of our present duty is 
to the white man of Europe. Europe is repeating the 
call of Macedonia and the Spirit of Christ is as mani- 
festly at work in present circumstances as he was in the 
incidents which shaped the conclusions and the course of 
the Apostle Paul, and inaugurated the first evangelical 
campaign in Europe. Foreign Missions must go to Eu- 
rope because Foreign Missions must go to the ends of the 
world. We shall need the white men of Europe to lift the 
Cross of Christ and to exemplify Christian brotherhood 
among the yellow and brown and black races of the world. 


THE NEW OPPORTUNITY IN EUROPE 75 


If we covet souls for Christ and allies for ourselves in 
the work of winning the world, we must heed the call of 
Europe now which is, as in Paul’s day, the call of God. 
The American churches and their leaders should remem- 
ber that four-fifths of the white people of the world are 
in Europe. How significant, then, among the signs of 
our times is the new call and opportunity of Europe! 

Says Dr. Everett Gill, an American who knows Europe 
and feels the urgency of this hour: 


“God has given us the Bible in the homeland with wealth 
and every potentiality ; then he has given us the opportunity 
in the foreign field among our own white brethren, above all 
in Europe where human destiny is to be decided! What a 
meeting of opportunities and the means! May God give us 
eyes to see our day and its duty!” 


CHAPTER VIII 


SIGN SEVEN: THE SUDDEN RISE AND POPULARITY OF 
DEMOCRACY 


Mark the downfall of autocracy and the opportunity 
given for experiment in democracy in many lands in re- 
cent years: China, Russia, Germany, Greece, Finland, 
Bulgaria, Czecho-Slovakia, Austria, Jugo-Slavia, etc. In 
all these lands thrones and rulers have given place to the 
call of the new day that the people may have a chance. 
The experiment goes further than the dethronement of 
rulers and the setting up of republics. It includes the be- 
stowing of suffrage upon many peoples, such for instance, 
as those in Porto Rico, Home Rule for Ireland, India, 
and the franchise for women in Britain, Holland, Russia, 
etc. Withal there has been a general democratization of 
industrial, social and religious conditions, this latter af- 
fecting even such autocratic religions as Mohammedan- 
ism and Greek Orthodoxy. 

Think, if you will, how revolution has disturbed the 
ruling ideas of Europe. Those principles which have been 
relied upon for centuries to uphold monarchy, autocracy 
and ecclesiastical authority and privilege, have been 
smashed and new ideas have taken their place. The world 
has never seen such revolution on such a scale in its whole 
history. Europe has been democratized in a day. Old 
Oppressions, suppressions, repressions, have been defied 
and abolished. Millions of men, with no political train- 
ing for the exercise of democratic liberty and, most fatal 
of all, no religious tutoring and nurture, flushed by their 
victories, intoxicated with new ideas and powers, are set- 
ting the nerves of their pete nbors on edge and arousing 


THE SUDDEN RISE OF DEMOCRACY 77 


the fears of another European and world war among the 
soberest onlookers. How these people need God! 

The war thrust the responsibility and the peril of de- 
mocracy upon millions who do not know what to do with 
it, and will in the experiment entail upon themselves many 
afflictions unless human nature is moderated and moti- 
vated by the teaching and spirit of Christ. Democracy is 
a boon or a bane according to whether the people to whom 
it has been given are prepared for it. Personal liberty 
must be limited by personal restraint, or it will be indulged 
to the excess of license. Political privilege has always 
been an instrument of personal improvement and national 
advancement, or it has been a weapon from which both 
have suffered. What European republics do with democ- 
racy will be determined by what they do with God. 
And what they do with God will largely depend upon what 
we do with our missionary opportunity and responsibility. 
Democracy administered by the unevangelized takes the 
form of socialism, communism, bolshevism, or brig- 
andage. 

There has been no such revolution in America as a 
dozen countries in Europe have experienced. War did 
not disturb American political conditions. It rather con- 
firmed American principles of government and strength- 
ened her influence in the world. There was no great 
shake-up here to create an extraordinary home call. We 
had our shake-up one hundred and fifty years ago. 
Democracy was then set free and evangelical Christian 
sects were soon guaranteed their rights. From the day 
when the hounded Christian pilgrims left the shores of 
the Old World for the New, preparation for democracy 
here had been in process. America did not have democ- 
racy thrust upon it. Democracy here was an achievement, 
though an achievement realized under providential bless- 
ing and superintendence. The one thing which prepared 
America for democracy was evangelical Christianity. 
This gave the spirit of sobriety, self-control, and a sense of 
duty and common rights, as well as a sense of personal 


78 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


rights to the individual citizens of America. It created 
respect for law, having first created a conscience for the 
law of God. It created reverence for personality, having 
produced religious reverence. Each man accorded rights 
to others while claiming them for himself because Chris- 
tianity had taught him brotherhood. 

These things were vouchsafed to us before God laid 
the claims of Europe upon us. Many of the nations in 
Europe have acquired democracy by the fortunes of war. 
Arbitrary national boundaries have been fixed by allies who 
were the enemies of autocracy. The individual nations of 
Europe, which have so suddenly had thrust upon them the 
responsibility of democracy, have not had religious leader- 
ship to prepare them for democracy. Democracy, indeed, 
is not, in every case, their achievement. Unless there is 
made speedily a mighty effort to supply evangelical Chris- 
tianity with its motives, its subduing of individual im- 
pulses, its empowering and ruling ideas, there is trouble 
ahead for Europe. Already some of the citizens of these 
republics in Europe, and some evangelical Christians in 
particular, are treated more harshly than they were treated 
by the autocrats. 

By all the blessings of God upon America for three hun- 
dred years, by all the support and value which evangelical 
Christianity has given democracy in this land, we are 
under Christian obligation to,communicate our religious 
faith to Europe in her desperate hour. God left Europe 
to swelter under the yoke and burden of ecclesiastical and 
political bondage until evangelical Christianity could grow 
to such stature and strength in America that it could help 
Europe tide over the political crisis which is a religious 
crisis. Talk of internationalism—there is no international 
obligation like the obligation which rests upon the evan- 
gelical churches of America to give to Europe the gospel 
of Christ, and by that gospel produce in Europe a sea- 
soned citizenship for the administration and enjoyment of 
democracy. We have by the blessings of God something 
better to give to Europe than gunpowder and cannon ball 


THE SUDDEN RISE OF DEMOCRACY 79 


and bombs and poison gas, and our obligation to give that 
something is more solemn than was our duty to dispatch 
soldiers and fighting machines in 1917. The few be- 
leaguered evangelical Christians of Europe are to-day, in 
their need and circumstance, calling to us, their brethren 
in Christ and proper spiritual allies, as England and 
France and Italy and Belgium did not call for our legions. 


“Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty” (2 
COrad-2 7). 


No man can go up and down Europe to-day, passing the 
new borders and mingling with those who administer the 
so-called democracies, and those who are ruled, and come 
away with a conviction that the war has given liberty to 
the people of Europe; or that democracy is safe in Eu- 
rope; or the people are safe under what is called democ- 
racy. We may as well once and for all realize that self- 
expression of an unregenerated man is but the hot breath 
of depravity, a plague and a scourge. Self-determination 
without self-restraint becomes self-extermination and a 
social menace. There is no true liberty in Russia or Rou- 
mania. This fact may not be charged against democ- 
racy. It simply illustrates that which all who are familiar 
with history know, namely, that Europe needs Christ to 
create that mutual confidence which is essential to the ad- 
ministration of democracy. If the rulers of Roumania 
could trust their fellow-citizens, their beds would be softer 
at night, and the expense of administration could be much 
reduced. But first these rulers must be taught that noth- 
ing but evangelical Christianity will produce such dis- 
interested patriotism and national loyalty as Roumania 
needs. Every ritualistic, ceremonial ecclesiasticism in the 
world is a meddler in politics, complicates government ad- 
ministration and vexes government officials whom it can- 
not use. The evangelical Christian alone is tutored in the 
doctrine of personal liberty without partiality. He is the 
only true democrat because he has learned his definitions 


80 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


of both freedom and loyalty from Jesus Christ. All he 
asks of the government is impartial, personal, religious 
and political freedom, and he will support the government 
loyally in guaranteeing these to everybody else and pre- 
serving its status as a republic and in the administration 
of democracy. The ceremonial ecclesiastic always in every 
land where his cult is dominant wants special privilege, 
and the government is a second consideration, unless that 
government serves him in securing special privilege. 

A Christless socialism is no better than a ceremonial ec- 
clesiasticism. The evangelical Christian says: “What I 
have belongs to others.’”’ The Christless Socialist says: 
“What others have belongs to me.” ‘This is the most ar- 
rogant autocracy. Social justice is administered by those 
who are grounded in principles of righteousness. There 
may be successfully administered a democracy where all 
the people are not experimentally and actually Christian ; 
but democracy has its genesis in soul freedom, which 
Christ alone confers, and it cannot function and survive 
where, by a great majority, the people are not either evan- 
gelical Christians, or have their ideas and ideals strongly 
influenced by evangelical Christianity. That is to say, so- 
cial and political democracy is a thing of the soul as much 
as a principle of state. 

Americans have too much idealism concerning democ- 
racy. In recent years democracy has found a place in 
thousands of our pulpits which is disproportionate to its 
place in the New Testament. Many preachers have clothed 
the word “democracy” with the sanctity of a gospel. They 
have seemed to think that at last a political panacea had 
been found for the world. Humility and self-denial hold a 
larger place in the New Testament than democracy and 
self-expression. Thoughtful men in all nations are now 
rapidly being disillusioned about democracy as a remedy 
for the ills of nations and society. China, Russia, Rou- 
mania and many other lands have made bungling demon- 
stration of democracy as a working political principle. 
But why have they failed in their experiments? For one 


THE SUDDEN RISE OF DEMOCRACY 81 


reason and one only: Religious conditions in these nations 
have been adverse to an experiment in democracy. De- 
mocracy never flourishes where priests of religion flourish, 
or where infidelity flourishes. Social injustice, oppression 
and discrimination always exist where priests are in high 
favor. Democracy to be democracy must be administered 
by democrats, and priests and institutions which they con- 
trol are not democratic. And priests and priestly institu- 
tions seek to control the state. 

Priests have an insatiable hankering after state recog- 
nition and state benefits, and in order to get such benefits 
they are forever putting their hands into affairs of state 
and reaching for state treasuries. 

Without an exalted Christ among a people and a power 
not their own which makes for righteousness, a humilia- 
tion of spirit, a sense of common justice born of a passion 
for brotherhood, democracy will miscarry in their hands. 
Without these graces which religion only nourishes, na- 
tional and race consciousness will rise to the point of 
danger and disgusting egotism: demagoguism and vain- 
gloriousness, will ride in the saddle of democracy. The 
most egotistic strut often characterizes the unregenerate 
who has suddenly been lifted to a social or financial posi- 
tion, even in a positive Christian society. Humility is the 
finest sign of citizenship in the Kingdom of God and must 
attend a wholesome race and national consciousness. 
Men will then look upon things of others as well as upon 
things which belong to themselves, and will not think of 
themselves more highly than they ought to think. 

The young people, who have not had impressed upon 
them deeply the Christian virtues of reverence and mod- 
esty, make exhibitions which have a warning for society. 
The undergraduates and junior professors in some of our 
American universities often exhibit a radical self-assertion 
which religious experience and religious influence would 
have tamed and directed to better purpose. The broad- 
gauged leader of thought will, if unregenerate, spread the 
rails of human progress and truth beyond safety. If, 


82 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


however, with all our Christian nurturing, these symp- 
toms appear in our midst, may we not better understand 
how the first dawn of popular enlightenment and experi- 
ence of personal liberty among the unevangelized nations 
may threaten the whole life of a people? 

The epigrams of Woodrow Wilson, uttered in the ef- 
fort to undermine autocracy in Germany, went reverber- 
ating around the world. They were hailed with acclaim 
by every small national and racial group in Europe and 
Asia, and were echoed by the dark tribes in the remotest 
jungles of Africa. The right of “self-determination, ’— 
“self-expression,” “self-direction” by small nations as 
well as large, by backward peoples as by the most ad- 
vanced, was to them a gratifying proclamation. Timbuc- 
too, as well as cultured Germany, welcomed the promise 
of these privileges, and claimed them as divine rights. 
Wilson’s words flew about the world and “democracy”’ 
became a catchword and a slogan. 

The New Testament speaks not of democracy but of 
obedience to God and government; not of self-govern- 
ment but of self-denial. A good illustration of the self- 
expression of a humble man and a self-conscious one re- 
spectively is Christ’s story of the two men who went up to 
the temple to pray. The one was humbly conscious of his 
unworthiness; the other self-conscious to the point of as- 
serting his pride and egotism even in prayer to God. The 
Publican appealed for mercy; the Pharisee for admira- 
tion! 

Democracy and its corollaries, self-expression and self- 
determination, must be cherished as an ideal and an ulti- 
mate realization by all the world and by every man. To 
abandon this ideal would mean to set civilization back and 
see it fall into a ditch from which it would require long 
years and tedious process to rescue it. But the word de- 
mocracy is not once named in the New Testament, though 
the ground for it is found there. The chief thing which 
the New Testament reveals concerning democracy is the 
conditions upon which the experiment in democracy may 


THE SUDDEN RISE OF DEMOCRACY 83 


be made with hope of success. To ignore the New Testa- 
ment prerequisite is to make a fatal blunder. Democracy 
and personal liberty institute a reign of self-will where the 
controlling wills have not been subdued to the will of God. 

We doubt that there is a word that is more needed 
than one of warning to those who have suddenly been 
given the rights and the administration of democracy, 
and to those who put their hope for the world in it. The 
past half-dozen years have furnished some as convincing 
failures in the administration of democracy as the ages 
have furnished of the failures of autocracy or the suc- 
cesses of democracies. There are examples in abundance 
which could be cited to show that democracy administered 
by the incompetent, the unqualified, may fill the world as 
full of injustice, poverty and bloodshed as autocracy ; that 
the masses of people may fall as far short of their rights 
under democracy as under autocracy. The experiments 
and maladministrations of democracy in some lands to- 
day are as tragical and brutal as anything which has pre- 
ceded it. Poor China! poor Russia! poor Roumania! 
poor Mexico! These lands are using the formulas of 
democracy to disguise the worst autocracy that has been 
foisted upon noble peoples in generations. 

For Christian men and women the experiments in de- 
mocracy have one very simple lesson. That lesson is, for 
best results men should experience Christ before they ex- 
periment in democracy. There is but one thing that can 
qualify a people for democracy, as there is but one remedy 
for human depravity and its self-expression—sin, hate 
and wrong-doing. There is one and only one effectual 
preparation of any people for self-government. For 
every land where kings have been dethroned, “another 
King, one Jesus” must be given his throne rights in the 
hearts of a large per cent. of the citizens before democ- 
racy is safe for the nation. If Jesus is enthroned in the 
lives of the men and women who control the nation, they 
will be free indeed, and their self-direction will be along 
the highway of civilization. Before a democracy which is 


84 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


attempted by unregenerate and godless men, the things 
which minister to man’s high estate are trampled under 
foot, the soul withers, and moral and political chaos 
reigns. 

The student of democratic government should not over- 
look, and the historian should never fail to recognize and 
recite the part which religion has played in the history of 
democracy, delaying, defeating, or insuring it. It was 
religion, and evangelical religion distinctly and preémi- 
nently, which prepared the way for the American Republic. 
Pilgrim, Puritan, Baptist, Presbyterian, and other groups 
and fellowships, who had by deep experience and sore 
trials of faith learned that one “is your master and all ye 
are brethren” laid the beams of this good Ship of State. 
It was the spirit of the people whom Christ had made free 
that filled the sails and wafted the ship in its course. 

We are all too slow to see the peril of the world ex- 
perimenting in democracy without the gospel, and that 
peculiar type of citizenship which the gospel and an open 
Bible produce uniformly and universally. If democracy 
itself is to be safe in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere, and if 
it is to bring safety to the millions of our fellow-creatures 
in those lands, Christian America, which had laid for her 
the foundations of democracy by the evangelical Chris- 
tian pioneers who were providentially permitted to make 
the beginning and experiment, must with great haste and 
determination carry Christian evangelization into these 
new republics and make it synchronous with democratiza- 
tion. The day is already far spent. Nominal democracy 
without Christ has already wrought havoc in some lands. 
Delay in the work of evangelizing these republics invites 
their disaster. Democracy without Christ will, with time 
to beget and mature its full brood of ills, socialism, com- 
munism, anarchy and intimidation, set the world on fire 
and set back human progress indefinitely. 

No sign or circumstance of this precarious hour calls 
more loudly to the churches of America for a foreign 


THE SUDDEN RISE OF DEMOCRACY 85 


mission advance than does the expansion of and experi- 
ment in democracy. 

Christian evangelization is a prerequisite to the best 
civilization. With this granted and accomplished we may 
then lay comparative stress on social, economic and in- 
dustrial aspects of Christian service, but never should 
these, one nor all, be accepted as substitutes for that Chris- 
tian service which brings men into living personal experi- 
ence of Christ and the fellowship of saints. In the pro- 
portion that emphasis is shifted from evangelization to 
social service or even education, there is sure to be a 
modification both of the evangelical faith and of the re- 
straining influence of Christianity upon the people. 

This much we have learned in America, and we 
should apply our experience to the world. All our altru- 
ism, all our philanthropies, all our humanities, all our 
schemes for the uplift of the nations, educational, politi- 
cal, social, and what not, must come to failure if Christ 
and the Christian experience be left out. Substitute what- 
ever else one will for that which seeks and secures the re- 
generation of men, and they will presently become so 
furious in race and national self-consciousness, that they 
will turn again and rend those who have sought to help 
them. 

Let it be summed up here that the sin of the world is 
spreading itself in defiance of law, irreverence for God, 
a lack of conscience for the Truth, respect for social pro- 
prieties and conventions, and disregard for human life 
itself. All this is a sign that an aggressive Christian 
evangelism is the call of God to Christian men at this 
hour both here and everywhere. If the note of evangelism 
is lost, education becomes a delusion and political, indus- 
trial and social reform end with a back kick which will 
stop and defeat human progress. There is absolutely no 
remedy for sin except the Cross of Christ which is at the 
heart of a gospel of repentance, atonement and redemp- 
tion. Until the heart of man is right, society will be 


86 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


wrong, and democracy itself a plague. Whole nations 
without God and Christian experience constitute the most 
menacing facts to world peace and progress that exist in 
our day. Unless there is haste in giving these the gospel, 
they will, with the new liberties which the new day has ac- 
corded them and their new impulses to self-assertion, im- 
peril the world. Their plight and the danger which they 
present alike admonish us not to be absorbed by minor 
things and, in being so, fail to give these nations that 
which will both save them and safeguard the world. 

Jealousy, suspicion, hate are the natural inward temper 
and outburst of men made conscious of liberty but ig- 
norant of duty and the laws of life and society. Aware 
of their rights, without a sense of obligation to others, 
they are certain to impinge their neighbors’ welfare. 
Every attempt at democracy without Christianity is such 
a failure as absolutely to prove the thesis that without 
Christ self-realization and self-determination and self- 
government are risky experiments. The conversion of the 
sinner is necessary to the security of society. Righteous- 
ness exalteth a nation and righteousness is unattainable 
except in Christ. Lowell has thrown down a challenge to 
the infidel in words which constitute a warning and an ad- 
monition to those who seek the world’s welfare. 


“When the microscopic search of skepticism, which has 
hunted the heavens and sounded the seas to disprove the 
existence of a Creator, has turned its attention to human 
society and has found a place on this planet, ten miles square, 
where a decent man can live in decency, comfort, and se- 
curity, supporting and educating his children unspoiled and 
unpolluted ; a place where age is reverenced, womanhood de- 
fended, and human life held in due regard; when skepticism 
can find such a place ten miles square on the globe where 
the gospel of Christ has not gone and cleared the way and 
laid the foundations and made decency and security possible, 
it will then be in order for the skeptical literati to move 
thither and ventilate their views. But so long as these very 
men are dependent upon the religion they discard for every 


THE SUDDEN RISE OF DEMOCRACY 87 


privilege they enjoy, they may well hesitate a little before 
they seek to rob the Christian of his hope and humanity of 
its Saviour.” 


What an argument for missions! That which is not 
good and safe for us is not good and safe for anybody. 
The chief need of others is that which is our own chief 
blessing and which sanctifies all else that belongs to our 
institutional estate. 


CHAPTER IX 
WHAT THEN? 


What then will be the consequence if the churches of 
America miss the meaning of the times in which they now 
live and fail to institute at once a strong foreign mission 
offensive? 

That question has by suggestion and implication been 
answered in the preceding pages. Nevertheless, let us 
summarize here by asking several questions: 1. What 
will be the consequence if the churches fail to respond to 
this call? 2. If the American churches fail, who will 
meet the world conditions? 3. Is America called to so 
great a responsibility? 4. What will be the consequence 
if the American churches measure up to their responsibil- 
ity in this great hour? 

1. What will be the consequence if the churches of 
America fail to answer the foreign mission call of God 
at this time? 

(1) Failure will disappoint Providence. That God is 
seeking to lure his churches forward for a great foreign 
mission advance no one who reviews the facts faithfully 
and impartially can doubt. His Spirit is not so manifest 
nor working so marvelously toward any other end as to- 
ward this, and no disappointment could quite equal his 
disappointment if the churches default in the main task 
for which they were created, the evangelization of the 
world, Dr. Augustus H. Strong asks some pertinent 
questions which bear upon this discussion at this point: 


“What are the churches for but to make missionaries? 
What is education for but to train them? What is com- 
merce for but to carry them? What is money for but to 

88 


WHAT THEN? 89 


send them? What is life itself for but to fulfill the purpose 
of foreign missions, enthroning Jesus Christ in the hearts 
of men?” 


Jesus showed no greater disappointment in anyone 
whom he encountered in his ministry than he did in those 
who could not read the signs of their times. 

Dr. Sidney Gulick in his book, “The Winning of the 
Far East,” says: 


“The next few decades bid fair to be the crucial period in 
world history. World goodwill and mutual service, or world 
downfall—that seems to be the alternative. In determining 
this alternative America has more to say at present than any 
other nation. In this crisis the Churches of America hold 
the decisive position.” 


(2) If the churches fail to meet this emergency and 
this generation fails to bear fresh witness to its faith in 
the gospel of Christ and the authority of Christ by a new 
missionary crusade, thus failing to expand the Kingdom 
and enhance the glory of the Cross, then another conse- 
quence is inevitable, namely, the faith of evangelical 
Christianity and the unique glory of that Cross will suf- 
fer here at home. No zeal in our preachers or churches 
can preserve the purity of the gospel if they are wanting 
in a passion for the gospel’s proclamation. Provincialism 
has produced some of the most deadly heresies in the 
world. The gospel is seed corn for sowing in mission 
fields. It cannot be boxed up and its quality preserved. 
It was not meant to be kept in cold storage. The churches 
which take the gospel afield are those which save lost men 
and at the same time save the gospel. Those who con- 
ceive of the gospel as being a thing for home consump- 
tion will find themselves and the gospel as they hold it to 
be a diminishing quantity. We keep the gospel pure’ and 
multiply it in proportion as we faithfully and widely 
preach it and reproduce and multiply it in the lives of 
others. 


90 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


(3) If we do not evangelize the world, the world will 
paganize, Romanize, Bolshevize America. If we wish to 
destroy these upas trees, we must go to their roots in 
Asia and Europe with the sharp ax of Truth. Already 
many pens dipped in their moraceous poison are attacking 
our government, our American Sabbath, our Bible, and 
our civil and religious institutions. If the gospel of 
Christ is not ministered quickly in lands where unregen- 
erate men, on fire with human hate and obsessed with 
self-expression and self-propagation, these will grow 
stronger, more daring and, under the protection of the 
liberties which democracy gives good and bad men, cor- 
rupt the thinking of multitudes in the homeland, and turn 
them into enemies of all that we dearly cherish. There 
are dangerous forces in heathen and semi-heathen masses 
led by men equipped by modern education and with mod- 
ern science and modern weapons. The world’s contrac- 
tion into “one neighborhood” which makes missionary 
contacts easy, makes possible also a neighborhood feud, 
which is the worst of all wars. If our Christianity does 
not overflow into the lives of these masses of Europe and 
Asia, their influence, standards, ideas, and ideals will over- 
flow us and become a political, social, economic, moral and 
religious peril; and that peril may not be far distant since 
we have come upon times when great world issues come 
quickly to the surface, move quickly, and spread rapidly. 
The war has not ended war nor made democracy safe for 
the world. As a matter of fact nothing that has hap- 
pened on this planet in centuries so unleashed depravity 
and produced such convulsions of immorality as has the 
war. 

The fires of hate which are flaring in so many areas of 
Europe to-day may, without a speedy subduing and with- 
out the extinguishing love of Christ, break out suddenly 
into another conflagration which may, and more than 
probably will, catch America in its destructive course and 
sweep. Lloyd George says: 


WHAT THEN? 91 


“Europe is a seething cauldron of intense national hate 
with powerful men in command of the fuel stores, feeding 
the flames and stoking the fires.” 


(4) But the loss of our opportunity is the saddest loss 
which we shall sustain if we are disobedient to the 
heavenly vision. Says Dr. Robert E. Speer: 


“This present generation is not a generation in the clutch 
of deep mortal need alone. It is a generation of plastic 
flow. Other great ideas will surely penetrate the minds of 
all mankind in this generation. Twenty-five years from now 
not a village on the face of the earth will be as it is to-day ; 
not a human life will be conditioned as it is to-day. Do we 
intend to sit idly by and allow other great ideas to pierce to 
the life of the world while the redeeming idea of Christ, 
which we know to be the most piercing and pervasive of all 
ideas, is postponed to be administered to a preempted world 
by generations that come after ours?” 


But the truth may as well be told. Much has been lost 
already by the meager support which the evangelical 
churches of North America have given the foreign mis- 
sion enterprise during the past half-dozen years. 

In the first place, millions who might probably have 
been saved have gone to their graves without Christ. The 
times and circumstances in which they lived robbed them 
of the consolations of even a false religion and the 
churches of Christ failed to supply that which would have 
sustained their spirits as they passed through the shadow 
and mystery of death. 

Again, some of the false religions have recovered some 
of their losses. Romanism has made a desperate effort to 
reingratiate itself in Europe. It has intrigued France and 
even Great Britain into sending a representative to the 
Vatican, and thus giving the papal power a new lease on 
life. 

While we have hesitated, Satan has been busy and the 


92 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


tares of error, prejudice and misunderstanding have been 
sown. 

The old diplomacies, which a great Foreign Mission 
Program in Europe would have rebuked, have been re- 
asserted and civilization has been checked. 

The Mohammedan Turk is back in Europe after being 
run out, and he is receiving the courteous bow of some 
governments which call themselves Christian. 

A flaming literature of Bolshevism, infidelity and sala- 
cious social taint has been sown abroad over Europe while 
Christian printing presses have been idle. 

Some of the old universities out of which came the 
ethics of the war, and which hung icicles on pulpits where 
tongues of fire should have proclaimed the gospel of 
Christ, are being resuscitated for further mischief. 

At home a large number of young men and women who 
offered themselves for foreign mission service and have 
been denied appointment because money for their support 
was not available, have been lost to the work, and, de- 
clining to send them, the boards have chilled the mission- 
ary zeal and purpose of others who were preparing for 
foreign mission work. 

Evangelical Christians in Europe who looked to us as 
their allies have been disappointed, and missionaries on all 
fields have become discouraged by debt on the home boards 
and repeated denial of their requests for reénforcement 
and equipment. 

Lands which could have been bought and buildings 
which could have been erected at trifling cost with the 
prices of land, labor, material and exchange all in our 
favor, especially in Europe, could not be secured. Much 
has been lost in missionary service and achievement, and 
this needed equipment will now cost from 50 to 150 per 
cent. more than it would have cost had the boards bought 
three or four years ago. 

(5) Losing this opportunity for Christian service, 
we not only lose it for ourselves, but we shall probably put 
it out of the reach of generations of Christian men who 


WHAT THEN? 93 


are to be our successors. The familiar story of Kublai 
Kahn has a lesson for Americans of this generation. It 
will be remembered that in the Ninth Century a few in- 
trepid missionaries reached Pekin where this Mongol 
ruler had established his capital. A church and an or- 
phanage were started. These attracted the attention of and 
pleased Kublai Kahn, and he decided that Christianity was 
a good thing for China. ,A delegation was accordingly 
dispatched to Rome with a request that one hundred mis- 
sionaries be sent to China at once. The Pope was too 
busy with his petty domestic and European politics to pay 
attention to Foreign Missions, and a call to a heathen coun- 
try. His opportunity, despised, passed, and after a thou- 
sand years it has not returned for Rome or Christianity. 
Pekin is a heathen city still and two-score generations of 
Chinese have died without ever hearing of Christ and his 
Cross, of his self-denying love and redemption. 

The opportunity passed, but the folly of despising it is 
seen in the early and bitter fruit. The Mongols without 
Christianity a little later turned their attention to Europe 
whose religious chief had ignored their request for mis- 
sionaries. The Mongols overflowed Russia and slaugh- 
tered people until “no eye was open to weep for the dead.” 

The American churches cannot close their eyes to the 
signs of the times and ignore the call of God to a Christian 
world service and escape consequences for themselves, 
their children and a neglected world which make one 
tremble to contemplate. 

Dr, J. H. Rushbrooke of London, England, Baptist 
Commissioner for Europe, a man with broad and exact 
knowledge of European religious conditions, says: 


“Remember, this call for help is urgent. We must act 
promptly, or the opportunity will have passed. Central and 
Eastern Europe are not yet stabilized. The tremendous over- 
turn in the political realm, the lack of fixity there, is a mani- 
festation, an accompaniment, a symbol of unrest in the minds 
of men. Mental and spiritual conditions, like political and 
economic, are still fluid. But they are tending towards 


94 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


rigidity. Wait five years, and you will be unable to produce 
such effects as are possible now. Wait ten years, and the 
God-given opportunity may have utterly vanished.” 


2. If the American churches fail God at this time, who 
will meet the world conditions? Can the reader, out of his 
knowledge of the religious forces of the world, turn to 
any other land in which evangelical Christianity is strong 
enough to take up this new burden and meet this new op- 
portunity which the world at present offers? No exact 
religious survey of the world is necessary to show that if 
America defaults, no reasonable ground of hope can be 
found in the evangelical churches of any other land. 
Make your survey if you will, and you will not find evan- 
gelical strength in any other part of the world sufficient 
for this task. There are neither numbers nor wealth to be 
found elsewhere to match the demands which need and 
opportunity make for this campaign. The issue is, of 
course, narrowed down to the white nations which alone 
have been as nations appreciably evangelized. Again, the 
survey may be reduced to the British Isles because beyond 
them Europe is a mission field, and even in them there is 
much need that calls to America. Ireland, with a potential 
people, is for the greater part under the bondage of Rome. 
Evangelize Ireland and Ireland would help evangelize the 
world, The evangelical Christians of Britain are doing 
heroic foreign mission service and can be depended upon 
to take a generous share of the world field, but there is 
not in the British Isles altogether a sufficient number of 
evangelicals to grapple successfully with Continental Eu- 
rope. Great odds are against evangelical Christianity in 
England. The promising mission field which Ireland of- 
fers is sufficient to tax the ability of the churches of 
Britain. On the continent, with the exception of small 
patches where the Germans have, in their homeland and 
elsewhere, been the chief agents of evangelization, vast 
territories are grown with the wild briers of superstition, 
common to Romanism and Greek Orthodoxy, which the 


WHAT THEN? 95 


phrases, semi-heathenism and pseudo-Christianity alone 
characterize. 

To illustrate the weakness of evangelicalism in Europe 
take France, where out of a population of 40,000,000 
there are but 1,000,000 evangelical Christians of all de- 
nominations; or Spain, where in a population of 21,000,- 
000 there are but 10,000; or Portugal, where but 6,000 
of 4,000,000 are even nominally Christians after the evan- 
gelical type. Europe does not furnish at present a mis- 
sionary force, but a mission field, and a mission field 
which presents great difficulties, but one which must be 
cultivated for Christ, and for the sake of the rest of the 
world, because four-fifths of the only race which can 
universalize Christianity are still in Europe. 

Speaking from the viewpoint of evangelical Christian- 
ity, America is more truly evangelized than any other na- 
tion in the world. No other nation, nor all other nations 
combined, can offer for missionary service such a body 
of free churches, so many evangelical ministers in full 
possession of that Christian initiative which is essential 
to a minister’s power, so many trained volunteer workers, 
so many Christian institutions, schools, theological semi- 
naries, publishing houses, religious periodicals, hospitals, 
orphanages,—all under control of evangelical denomina- 
tions. No such force has ever been mustered for Christ 
and New Testament truth in all the world and in any age 
outside of North America; nor have the evangelical 
forces in any other land been so organized and drilled on 
lines so consistent with freedom and effectiveness. There 
are more women’s organizations, young people’s societies, 
Sunday school teachers, etc., who have had some special 
training for their work than can be named by any survey 
beyond our borders. 

If America defaults, evangelical Christianity may get 
ready to capitulate before her enemies, and we may recon- 
cile ourselves to the loss of millions of precious souls in 
this and succeeding generations. There are faithful men 
and women in other lands who will not give up the cause 


96 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


without desperate effort. They are, indeed, making des- 
perate effort now. They will continue, at great personal 
sacrifice, their effort to save the lost and universalize the 
precious faith of the gospel, but if America deserts them 
the odds against them are too many. There is scarcely a 
camp of them which is not beleaguered and which is not 
forced to a defensive maintained at great cost while their 
eyes are turned to America for reénforcement and 
succor, 

3. But is America equal to so great responsibility? 
Numbers, organization, institutions, and agencies are not 
all that show our incomparable ability and our unparal- 
leled responsibility. Our financial ability places us in 
equally greater contrast with evangelical Christianity of 
other lands. In money with which to finance the foreign 
mission crusade to which God is calling us, we are as ex- 
ceptionally equipped as in other respects. There are more 
than fifteen hundred million people in the world; but 
America’s one hundred million hold one-half the gold of 
the whole world! America’s wealth astonishes other na- 
tions. 

Not only so, but compared with the white races of the 
world, who alone at present share in any large measure 
with us the responsibility of disseminating the gospel, we 
are financially freedmen and our brothers in other lands 
are in comparison in bonds of poverty. The war has left 
Europe broken and loaded and burdened by debt. The 
following figures, which have been widely published in 
American periodicals during the recent weeks, spell 
American missionary responsibility : 


BRITAIN owes the U.S. about .......... $4,500,000,000 
FRANCE owes the U.S. about ........ 4,000,000,000 
ITALY OWES the-Ul.o. about ys os ame as 2,100,000,000 
Russia owes the U.S. about .......... 250,000,000 


The colossal sum of $10,850,000,000 due this prosper- 
ous country by four of the impoverished countries of 
Europe, think of it! 


WHAT THEN? 97 


What these debts which overhang the European nations 
mean in high taxes, in curtailment of public works, 
through which in America so much money is distributed 
among the people, few American citizens can quite realize. 

But to the comparative poverty and war debts add the 
disparity between the daily wage of Europeans and 
Americans. Bear in mind, too, that the wage scale brings 
the question of financial ability or disability down to the 
average man as no estimate of national wealth does. 
There are in Europe a few rich men yet, as there are many 
rich men in America, but the masses in Europe are poor 
beyond any general poverty with which we are familiar 
in this country. The wage scale in contrast with Ameri- 
can wages tells how the middle classes are living, and 
more than anything else fixes American missionary re- 
sponsibility upon all our church members. According to 
tables given by Mr. Sherwood Eddy in his book, “The 
World of Labor,” published in 1923: 

The average daily wage of the laboring class in Eng- 
land in $2.92; in Germany $0.57; in France $1.99; 
United States $7.13. 

The above figures show that the average pay of an 
American laboring man is nearly 214 times that of the 
Briton, more than 3% times that of a Frenchman, more 
than 12 times that of the German. 

Figures given by the same authority show that the 
week’s pay of the average American laboring man will 
buy more than 2 times as much as will the week’s pay of 
the average Briton, more than 4 times that of the German, 
more than 3% times that of a Frenchman. 

If we make the comparison of the weekly wage of the 
American laboring man with his brother laborer in Japan, 
China, or elsewhere in Asia, the contrast is even more 
glaring, indeed out of comparison. The best of authori- 
ties assure us that millions in heathen lands go to bed’ hun- 
gry every night. 

Can there rest, therefore, on any other people in the 
world such a weight of financial responsibility for the 


98 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


Kingdom of God in the world as that which rests upon 
America? Moreover, the responsibility in other lands 
does not rest upon the masses as it rests upon them here, 
for, as one can see, they get little for daily bread while 
we get enough and to spare. 

No other people in the world live as extravagantly as 
Americans. The luxuries of others are claimed by Ameri- 
cans as their necessities. More than eighty-eight per cent. 
of the automobiles owned by the fifteen hundred millions 
of people in the world are owned by the one hundred mil- 
lion who live in the United States. In the United States 
there is 1 automobile to every 6 and a fraction of the 
population; in Great Britain there is 1 to 69; in France 
1 to 88; Germany I to 446; in Italy 1 to 518, and when 
you get beyond these countries, one rarely sees an auto- 
mobile except public service machines which are owned 
by corporations. 

John Galsworthy said: 


“America has the might of a great country and a great 
people behind her. With her powers she can accomplish 
wonders for the benefit of the world. But she must look to 
the use she makes of her might. Whatever she does is 
watched with careful eyes by England, for whatever Amer- 
ica does affects England. America’s actions vitally affect 
England, not so much in a material way as in a spiritual 
way. To America the whole world looks. Her dauntless 
spirit, her desire for the best things, the force of her inhabi- 
tants are capable of being of the greatest service to the rest 
of the world. America is on the threshold of her career. 
She may step out as the redeemer of the world. It is her 
duty to do so. Noblesse oblige is as much an obligation of 
democracy as of aristocracy, and at present rests peculiarly 
in the United States.” 


If America is to “step out as the redeemer of the world” 
there is not a moment for hesitation in doing so. 

Sir Auckland Geddes, former British ambassador to 
the United States, says: 


WHAT THEN? 99 


“America is now one of the greatest empires in history 
and has taken over from Great Britain the world’s leader- 
ship, especially in connection with work for the higher 
service of humanity.” 


Will America indeed exercise this leadership in the 
highest of all service, the spiritual salvation of the world? 
It is for the evangelical Christian churches of America to 
answer that question. To them God has in this hour 
given a supreme and a sublime mission, that of carrying 
the Good News to the world in its distress. Evangelical 
Christianity has found here its Eldorado, but God did not 
ordain that we should use our goodly heritage for self- 
pampering. When he gave us this land, he trusted us to 
use it for the good of all lands. 

Nevertheless, evangelical Christianity in America has, 
during these six great tremulously pivotal years in the 
world’s destiny, spent upon itself some twelve dollars for 
every one dollar that it has spent upon the fourteen hun- 
dred millions of people in other lands. In this very 
period of God’s summons to world service, we have in- 
creased our home expenditures and correspondingly de- 
creased our foreign mission offerings. Can it be possible 
that anyone can reflect upon the facts and conceive that 
such is the will of God for our American people? 

4. Finally, what will be the consequence if the Ameri- 
can churches measure up to their great responsibility in 
this great hour? 

(1) For one thing the preachers of America who in- 
terpret the signs of the times, lift up their eyes and look 
afar on the great mission fields, and faithfully relate them- 
selves and their churches to the task before us, will, under 
such inspiration and in such leadership, grow as ministers 
of Christ toward the measure of the stature of the full- 
ness of Christ. A great foreign mission campaign will, as 
certainly in this generation as in the first Christian cen- 
tury, make great preachers. 

(2) Second, response to the call of God for world ser- 


100 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA 


vice at this time will deepen and heighten and broaden the 
spirituality of our churches and save many children of 
God from a worldliness that is now creating spiritual 
famine everywhere and spiritual debilitation. Foreign 
Missions will, as certainly as it is prosecuted in great fash- 
ion, revive spiritual religion in our home churches. Christ 
walks with those who give themselves wholeheartedly to 
the fulfillment of his Commission. When Richard Fuller 
was downcast and weeping over coldness, indifference, and 
worldliness in his London congregation, he betook himself 
to preaching on The Duty of Christians to Give the Gospel 
to a Lost World. It was then that a revival broke out in 
his church which revived his drooping spirit and bore 
many souls into the Kingdom of Christ. The church in 
this land whose spiritual life has run low needs Foreign 
Missions as a means of grace. Fuller himself says of the 
home benefits of Carey’s missionary venture and work: 


“A new bond of union was furnished between ministers 
and churches. Some who had backslidden from God were 
restored, and others who had long been poring over their 
unfaithfulness and questioning the reality of their personal 
religion, having their attention directed to Christ and his 
kingdom, lost their fears and found peace which in other 
pursuits they had sought in vain.” 


Truly says Dr. Stacy R. Warburton in his most ex- 
cellent book, “Making a Missionary Church”: 


“Any church that sets before itself as its aim and goal 
the establishing of the kingdom of God in all the world and 
in the lives and relations of all men, will not fail to grow in 
strength or to develop its members spiritually or to reach 
the people of its own community. The greater includes the 
less. There is no greater aim or ambition than the mission- 
ary purpose. And to make every other aim and every other 
plan contributory to this matchless one which is Christ’s, is 
to make certain the fulfilling of every lesser one that is 
worthy. The greatest need in the kingdom of God is 
churches and pastors big enough and bold enough and 


WHAT THEN? 101 


Christlike enough to take a chance on success at home, in 
their own community, for the sake of success in the great 
world field which the Lord has committed to them. God 
will not fail a church or a pastor that takes such a venture 
of faith.” 


(3) But the discharge of our duty in larger foreign 
mission service will, with present world conditions, insure 
an ingathering of precious souls on the foreign fields for 
which no parallel is found in modern missions. Millions 
on the foreign fields are ready to make the great decision 
if only the missionaries be sent to them and the issue be 
pressed now. It is the readiness of the world as well as 
its needs that makes up the urgency of the hour for 
Foreign Missions. 


“T hear the voice 
Of one who calleth, 
Calleth sweet and clear, 
For men to reap for him 
A harvest white. 
Oh, soul of mine, rise up and answer him 
Before the night, 
The long night falleth, 
And the day be gone, thy day be gone.” 


THE END 





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